


Downtown Storm with Aries Rising

by gravy_tape, nuricurry



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: 90's AU, 90's Music, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders, Foster Care, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Multi, Recovery, Rehabilitation, Slow Burn, Trans Character, Ven and Vanitas are NOT related
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17472083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravy_tape/pseuds/gravy_tape, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: The black magic of Mulholland DriveSwimming pools under desert skiesAlways on the hunt for a little more timeJust another LA DevoteeIn the words of Kurt Cobain: "The worst crime is faking it." A city full of sinners and saints, where there are plenty of people who fall into the grey-line in between. Multi-narrative AU set in 90's era LA.





	1. all the dreams you never thought you'd lose

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is essentially a love letter between myself and gravy_tape to our mutual misaligned youth. Told in the perspective of multiple characters at various points, it's an interwoven mess. Lots of mention of drug use, eating disorders, and various other possibly triggering subject matter. And also references to very good 90's music.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku returns home.

Standing under the covered pavilion granted Riku some protection from the blistering July sun that was causing waves of heat to ripple up from the black asphalt. Each time the automatic doors behind him slid open, he felt a short rush of cool air conditioning against the nape of his neck and back, before it was completely absorbed by the summer air a few seconds later. A nurse had asked him half an hour ago if he wouldn’t prefer to wait inside the lobby, but he declined, and kept himself parked to the side of the doors, awkwardly straddling his oversized suitcase.

Another bead of sweat dripped off the end of his nose, when he heard the low rumble of an engine approaching, and as he turned to look, a beat up Toyota with patchy red paint followed the curve of the road up to the front entrance of the clinic, before coming to a stop right in front of Riku. The driver’s side window was already down, and a head of messy brown hair leaned out of it, along with a tanned and freckled arm. 

“Hey!” Sora greeted warmly, as he gave Riku a wave, “Sorry I’m little late, there was some accident or something on the freeway.”

Sora was smiling, all straight white teeth (earned after three years of braces in high school, Riku remembered), for all appearances sincere and genuine, and Riku felt his stomach flip and knot up, before relocating to somewhere behind his knees. Mechanically, he returned the wave, and tried to give a smile back, but it hurt the corners of his mouth. 

“Hey,” he said, and then, “It’s fine, it’s whatever. I don’t mind waiting. Thanks for picking me up.” That last comment was a little delayed, almost forgotten, because Riku was still trying to figure out how to feel in this situation, he was still trying to sort out what Sora felt, and what Sora thought. Because it had been thirteen months since they had seen each other, and he wasn’t sure how much had changed between the two of them in that length of time. 

“Do you need help with your bag?” Sora asked, moving right along with ease, even as Riku stood there holding his breath. Riku shook his head, and moved off the suitcase, picking it up with two hands. “Hang on, I’ll pop the trunk for you,” he said, and his head and arm disappeared back into the car, and then, a second later, as promised, the back of the car popped open, and Riku was given a place to put his luggage. 

When that was done, he went to the passenger side of the car, so that Sora could lean over to lift up the lock, after which he dropped himself inside the car, buckling in. 

Oasis was playing just over a murmur on the radio, and there was an artificial lei and tiny plastic surfboard hanging off the rearview mirror, which made Riku feel as if he had just disassociated, thrown out of his body and into a different reality, because absolutely nothing about Sora’s car had changed, and he couldn’t help but wonder if everything was all a dream. 

“Do you want to get something to eat?” Sora asked, as he put the car into drive and began to navigate his way out of the parking lot, “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Did you eat?”

The question made the hair on the back of Riku’s neck stand on end. Not because Sora asked it, but because that question had been asked in twenty different ways with ten different interpretations every day for the past year and it only recently stopped giving him the reflexive urge to snap at someone. So instead, he swallowed down the knee-jerk impulse to be sarcastic, and replied, “I had something for breakfast. But I could eat something.” 

“Cool, cool,” Sora said, not really looking at Riku, or seemingly noticing the flex of his fingers in his lap, or the sharp intake of breath he just took. Sora was paying attention to the road, looking at street signs, and trying to find the right turn. “We’ll grab something then. We can get some pizza.” 

When Oasis got replaced by Beck, Sora reached out and turned the knob on the radio, bringing up the volume as he began to sing along. Riku, who’s stomach still hadn’t migrated back into it’s proper place underneath his lungs, instead leaned back into his seat, and gripped the fabric of his jeans, saying nothing. He just stared out of the windshield, and tried to remember the things he used to say, when conversation came easily to him and Sora, when he wasn’t afraid of saying something biting and crude without thinking. Though, that last part was a lie; he used to always think about it. He always knew exactly what he was saying, and how it would make Sora feel. He used to say mean things because he felt like he was being slowly dissolved in a pit of acid every second of his life. It felt like he was dunked deeper into that metaphorical vat of chemicals every time Sora looked in his direction, smiled in his direction, breathed within five goddamn feet of him, and so he’d stay up for hours at night, his brain too wired to sleep, thinking up awful things to say that would make Sora stop looking at him so happily, for just a few seconds at a time. 

The being-eaten-by-acid feeling had never gone away. But going to rehab had at least made him stop instinctively trying to take it out on anyone who happened to be in his line of sight. 

“Hey, Sora,” his voice came out of his mouth, but he hadn’t even thought about making any sounds. The words were unbidden, unplanned, and Riku felt sweat begin to stick the strands of his hair to the back of his neck again, in spite of the vents blowing tunnels of cool air into his face.

“Hm?” Sora hummed, and finally glanced over to look at Riku, as he rolled to a stop at a red light. Their eyes met. Sora’s were still that impossibly bright shade of blue, clear and electric and warm, familiar in a way that made Riku think of second grade and the two of them sharing cheap popsicles that came in plastic sleeves. Sora always got purple, because that was all Riku gave him; it was his least favorite flavor and Sora never complained. “What’s up?”

The question reminded him that he had started this branch of conversation. Riku hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, before finally, he blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

“...What for?” It really looked as if Sora didn’t have even the faintest idea of what Riku could be apologizing for. He just cocked an eyebrow, wrinkled his nose, and stared at Riku, until the car in front of him moved, and he was forced to look back at the road. “I told you, I don’t mind picking you up. I’m glad you asked me! I was excited to see you.”

“No, not for that,” Riku said. _For being an asshole. For not eating anything. For getting so fucked up. For not seeing you for a year. For being gay. For taking it out on you. For pushing you away._ But, he didn’t say any of those things. Instead, what he did say was, “Sorry, I don’t have money for gas. I’ll pay you back later.” 

Sora laughed at that. “Don’t worry about it,” he waved the offer off, “It’s no big. And, I’ll treat you to lunch.”

* * *

Sora ultimately took him to a Chinese buffet instead of pizza. It was cheap, it had a variety, and Sora clearly knew the people who owned the place. When they walked in, they greeted him by name, and they got lead to a table next to a large window, which seemed to be Sora’s usual spot. Sora kept piling up the table with empty plates, while Riku tapped out at two, though he was also given plenty of additional bites of food, when Sora would offer something of his own, as always willing to share, eager to take care of someone else. Riku obliged, only because he felt he couldn’t say no, without making it seem like something it wasn’t. 

After they ate, they headed home. Home, which was a word Riku hadn’t said in thirteen months, and which didn’t seem to fit any place he knew anymore. ‘Home’ was just his mom’s house, that he was living in because he was nineteen and out of rehab and without a job. Home was an empty driveway because it was two o’clock on a weekday, and his mom was out of town. It was a key he had to pull out from a hiding spot in the porch rafters because he didn’t have his own copy anymore. It was the room he’d lived in since he was four, decorated on one wall with Nirvana and Rush posters, and dance medals and certificates on the other. Sora helped him heft his suitcase onto his bed, and then stood in the center of the room, looking around, saying nothing for a long time. To Riku, he was examining everything, criticizing it, picking apart the basket of long-unwashed laundry in the corner, the spare ballet slippers haphazardly kicked under the bed, the beat up carpet and floor length mirror that Riku used to spend hours staring into and hating himself. 

But, when Sora looked at him again, his eyes were not sharp or judgmental, and he only smiled again, before he said, “Man, I’ve missed being in here! You always had such cool stuff.” 

He moved from the center of the room, over to the dresser beside Riku’s bed, in order to examine a collection of framed photos on top of it. Riku didn’t have to look over, to remember which ones were displayed. One was him and his mom at Disneyland, standing between Mickey and Minnie. He remembered that trip being the summer after the divorce, when he just turned seven, and his mom decided to spend some of the alimony on him. Another was of the competition he entered when he was thirteen, wearing all black and in the midst of a fouette; that photo had been put in the newspaper when he ended up bringing home a silver medal, and a copy of that article was hung up on the wall down the hall. The last photo was one that had Sora let out an all too affectionate hum of, _“aww,”_ as he picked it up, and held the frame in his hands. That photo was of him and Sora during one of their first ballet classes, both of them sitting on the floor. Riku was glancing at the camera, with his legs splayed out in front of him in his bright red dancer tights, while Sora wore his usual cheek splitting grin, his hands making peace signs and two of his front teeth missing. “I forgot about this picture. I think my mom has a copy of it somewhere; I should put it up too!” 

“I think just one visible piece of evidence is enough,” Riku quipped dryly, which made Sora laugh.

“Ah, I miss going to classes with you,” Sora sighed, still holding the frame in his hands, and looking over the photo inside, “We always had so much fun together.”

“You quit like, eight years ago,” Riku pointed out, more than a little confused, “I don’t even think you graduated out of the beginner’s level.” Those words, to his ears, came out sounding more biting than he meant, and he stopped, and took in a breath, watching Sora’s profile, to see the flicker of hurt that would cross his face.

It never came. Instead, Sora just laughed again. “I mean, yeah, but that was only because you advanced so fast and I got left behind. It wasn’t fun without you there to do it with me.” 

Riku said nothing, and Sora replaced the photo on the dresser. 

“Have you thought about if you’re going to go back to it?” he asked, facing Riku properly. “I mean, I know you haven’t done it since like, junior year, but you always seemed to have so much fun doing it.”

Fun, sure, that was what it was. Fun stretching his legs and his feet until it felt like they were going to tear into pieces, burning hot and tender under his skin. Fun feeling his toenails get ripped off inside his shoes after spending weeks practicing for a performance. Fun being in a room literally covered in mirrors, seeing every flaw, every piece of himself that he hated from every angle, and having a whole company of people all agree with him that he’d gotten a little soft in the stomach from having nachos and cake at Kairi’s fifteenth birthday party. Fun spending hours locked in a bathroom stall, sweat pouring down his back and his heart racing, trying not to throw up because the medication made him nauseous but it also made him lose weight, even if he was certain he was going to die of heart failure at any second. All of that, yeah, it must have been fun.

“I think I enjoyed it once,” Riku shrugged, giving no real answer, “I haven’t thought about it yet.” Because thinking about anything other than getting through each day one at a time was like asking him to dig himself out of a grave with a teaspoon, scoop by scoop.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Sora nodded, as he redirected his attention to the selection of cassette tapes Riku had organized on a rack next to his stereo, “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out!”

Riku wasn’t nearly so optimistic.


	2. scars are souvenirs you never lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku remembers. Kairi visits. Everyone likes fried potatoes for breakfast. References to past drug use and eating disorders.

The only reason he got put on Ritalin in the first place was because in seventh grade he lied to his mom and told her he was flunking history. In reality, he was skating by with a solid C grade. However, he knew that Juilliard didn’t accept Cs, and no matter how hard he studied, he couldn’t get his tests above a 75%. So, he ended up asking around, and he paid ten bucks in fifth period for four pills from someone else’s supply. Ritalin got him his first A in history, and then brought his entire grade to a high B by the end of the semester. 

He didn’t tell his mom that though. He told her he was going to fail because he couldn’t concentrate in class, and because it was the early 90’s and every parent thought that Ritalin was the magic pill that would fix their children, he was sent to a doctor who seemed to only exist to write the prescriptions his patients asked for. For the next five years that orange bottle took up residence on his dresser, on the bathroom sink, in his backpack, in his dance bag, and Riku couldn’t relax unless he knew exactly where it was, and exactly how many pills it contained. 

It started out with him taking it so that he could get a 4.0 GPA, but it didn’t take long for Riku to notice it got him other things. It got him extra energy to stay up longer, and get ahead of his classes. It got him focus, so that he could memorize new choreography in half the time it used to take. It got him to stop feeling hungry and tired and weak, and when he dropped the first ten pounds, his ballet instructor praised him for it. 

Riku was fourteen, and likely would have shed off the lingering baby fat and roundness to his cheeks within the year, but ballet wasn’t a kind or patient sport, and it was better that he was thinner sooner than later. So Riku kept taking the Ritalin, except in double doses, and never heard any comments about his weight from his teacher again. 

He wasn’t the only one who did it. Half of the girls in the company carried their own orange bottles in their bags and purses, though not all of them had real prescriptions. Some of them who didn’t would ask Riku to share his, and he typically compiled, because he knew what it felt like to not have it, how it made his skin crawl and hands jittery. Olette had always been on the chubbier side, but her mom wouldn’t take her to get a prescription, and so Riku shared his with her, and would play look-out in front of the bathroom door when she would go in to throw up. He complimented her when she thinned out so much the straps of her bra began slipping off her shoulders, and afterwards began to think up different ways to try to get rid of the Loco Moco that Sora’s mom made him for breakfast every time he slept over. 

In the end, he just kept telling Sora’s mom he wasn’t hungry (which wasn’t exactly a lie) and when she’d send him home with a plate of food anyway, he’d throw it in the trash the moment he got in the door. His mom was never home often enough to notice how Riku didn’t eat. She came home after dinnertime, and was asleep when Riku left for school, and the boxes of Gushers and Dunkaroos were either given to Sora and Kairi or exchanged for an extra pill of Ritalin when Riku was running low and still had two weeks until his mom could pick up his next refill. Riku found that not eating was actually a lot easier than trying to find time to eat in between everything else he was doing, and so he was glad his mom didn’t notice; he had everything figured out, and if she tried to make him to get food down, it’d only mess it all up.

But by the time he was sixteen, ADD medication wasn’t cutting it like it used to. His grades slipped back down to Bs and even a C in Algebra, and Riku began to wonder if maybe there was a way to up his dosage, beyond taking two pills at a time. The solution, as it turned out, ended up not being more Ritalin at all. 

Vanitas was the school burnout who had failed his junior year twice. He only made it to senior because he finally made it to school often enough that his absences didn’t disqualify him immediately, but he still barely made it to class. More often than not, he passed hours smoking in the locker room bathrooms next to the gym, and Riku would catch sight of him when he was getting changed. Sometimes it was just cigarettes, and other times it was pot, but once Riku accidentally walked in on him standing over the sink, snorting a white powder off the back of his hand. 

“Hey,” Vanitas greeted, looking at Riku through his reflection in the mirror, “Need something?” 

Vanitas had patchy dyed hair and a new piercing through his eyebrow. Every time Riku saw him, he seemed to have stabbed another hole someone in his body, whether it be his ears or his face, and he used Sharpie marker to paint his nails black. His clothes never looked washed, and some of his shirts looked ‘vintage’ in the way that they were torn to shreds and were so threadbare that the outline of his chest could be seen through them. That particular morning was no different, though Vanitas also had fresh lines of scratches up the inside of his wrists, going up past the cuffed bracelets he wore. Riku didn’t say anything at first-- didn’t know what to say-- and so Vanitas ended up sneering at him as he rubbed his nose with the heel of his palm. “What? Got something on my face?” he asked sarcastically, and then gave an exaggerated snort. 

Riku knew about other kids who crushed their pills for an extra high. Riku also knew that even snorting his Ritalin wasn’t going to get him what he needed. So he didn’t say anything, and just approached the other sink, turning on the tap and cupping his hand under the faucet to get a mouthful of water, before he pulled his pill bottle from his pocket, and popped two into his mouth, almost as if to prove a point. Vanitas watched, and then laughed, rubbing his nose again. 

“Smarties?” he scoffed, which made Riku throw a look his way, “Fuckin’ a, why don’t you just dump a bunch of pixie stix in your nose?”

“Is that what you were doing?” Riku bit back, then defensively added, “I’m not the one snorting Ritalin in the bathroom.” 

Vanitas only laughed harder, so much that he had to grab onto the lip of the sink, as he bent over at the waist. Nothing Riku said should have been particularly funny, and being laughed at only caused the constant thrum of irritation and tightly wound thread of patience inside him to snap, enough where he lashed out, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Who fucking snorts Ritalin?!” Vanitas managed to get out between shuddering breaths. “Jesus Christ.” 

Eventually, once Vanitas stopped laughing in his face, and Riku didn’t punch him, or storm out of the bathroom, he explained the small bag he carried on the inner lining of his jacket. Cocaine was something Riku only heard about in movies and on the news. It was the eternal boogeyman, the proverbial specter that destroyed Mexico and Skid Row. From Vanitas, however, he learned that coke was everything Ritalin wished it could be, before it was filtered down so it’d be safe for kids. Then he let Riku dip his pinky finger into the bag, and rub some along the top of his gums. 

“You don’t start snorting it, stupid,” Vanitas said when he asked, “Who do you fucking think you are, Scarface?”

Riku didn’t want to say that the only exposure he had to how cocaine worked was through Al Pacino's acting because he knew Vanitas would laugh at him again for that. So, he did what he said, stuck his finger inside his cheek and rubbed the powder into his gums, and managed to somehow earn a nod of some strange, burnout approval from Vanitas. 

“Hey, Riku, the coach is looking for you,” Sora’s voice came in tandem with the sound of the bathroom door being swung open, and Vanitas had tucked the dime bag away before it could be noticed, while Riku had turned back towards the sink, making a show of carefully washing his hands. “Oh, uh, hey Vanitas,” Sora greeted, always friendly, but also awkward. He glanced at Riku, catching his eye, but he didn’t hold that gaze. Instead, Riku just pumped the dispenser for more soap. “Are you in gym with us now?”

“Nah, just snorting coke in the bathroom,” Vanitas countered with a shrug, “Ballerina Boy here just did a few bumps with me.” 

Riku felt every inch of his body seize. The seconds passed like hours, every nerve in his body firing off alarms of panic, forcing Riku to whip his head around in order to look at him with wide eyes. 

“Hey, don’t joke about that!” Sora’s voice was indignant, and flustered, “It’s not funny! C’mon Riku, we should hurry up,” he said, motioning for him to follow him out, and Riku said nothing, just nodded his head, turned off the tap, and escaped the bathroom behind Sora. 

Vanitas’ biting laughter and sing-song crow of, “Bye~!” as the door swung shut followed Riku down the hall, leaving a similar numbing, tingling sensation in his teeth that the drugs did. That encounter, though, didn’t stop him from seeking out Vanitas during sixth period a week later, and offering him twenty bucks for whatever amount of coke that would buy him. 

“Better than the smarties?” Vanitas remarked knowingly. Riku shoved the two bills in his hand, and said nothing.

By that summer, Vanitas had dropped out of school. But, he still served as Riku’s dealer, meeting him outside the back door of dance studio once a week. Riku got fifty bucks a week in allowance from his mom, who got it from his dad, and he spent thirty of it every time on drugs. Not always just coke, sometimes pot, and once or twice acid, but they never really did it for him the way that cocaine did. Weed didn’t curb his appetite and acid just made him feel like his ears were full of bees and his lungs full of spiders. 

He only used pot with Sora, and only when his mom was going to be out of town for the weekend. Despite the fact that his problems had him probably at some of his worst behavior at that point, Sora still asked to come over, still wanted to be around him, which Riku could hardly understand. But, he never turned Sora down. 

Sora always brought over a tupperware of his mom’s chicken long rice, even though they’d end up ordering a pizza too, and then they would sit in front of the television watching MTV and sharing a joint. Kairi was invited sometimes, and when she and Sora got high they just laid next to each other on the floor with their legs on Riku’s couch, giggling at every little thing and trying to toss gummy bears into each other’s mouth. When Kairi didn’t come over, either because she had soccer practice or because her aunt was suspicious about what she was doing, Sora was still giddy and talkative, but he tended to drape himself across Riku’s lap, and obscenely pick popcorn kernels out from between his braces, his mouth never stopping throughout the whole process. 

Sora was overwhelmingly physical when he was sober. When he was high, his clinginess was inescapable. 

The last sleepover before their fight (the one that Riku mentally tagged and labeled in his head as The Fight, because it wasn’t the first, but it was the only one that mattered), Sora had found his VHS of The Black Cauldron and popped it into the VCR. Riku was sitting on a beanbag, leaving the couch for Sora to stretch out across, but instead of taking the offer, Sora dumped himself on top of Riku, his weight so sudden and unexpected it knocked the wind out of him. 

“Jesus Sora, you weigh, like, two tons!” he wheezed, which made Sora laugh and settle in further, “No, jeez, seriously, you’re crushing my spleen, I think I’m going to die.” 

Sora lifted himself, but only just enough for Riku to try and rearrange his own limbs, and once he had, he dropped down onto him again, though, significantly less violently than before. It hadn’t been Riku’s intention for him to sit down on top of him again; he had in fact hoped the opposite. Because Sora was a warm, intoxicating weight against his stomach, his hair smelled like the lemon trees that grew in his backyard and the rose shampoo in his bathroom. Sora was browned, tanned and freckled muscle. Sora had a lingering smear of pizza grease on the corner of his mouth, which Riku only noticed because he’d begun staring at his lips, because he was a fucking idiot and he was blazed and Sora was right there in his face. 

God, he wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him since they were twelve, and every day since. But he couldn’t, because kissing Sora would make him gay, and he couldn’t be gay. Because his mom probably wouldn’t like it, and because God forbid anyone at school hear that he actually wanted to kiss Sora. He got enough shit because he did ballet; he didn’t need to make it worse, by confirming all their suspicions. But, more than anything, he couldn’t be gay, because he didn’t know if Sora could be friends with someone who was gay, and he’d rather be Sora’s friend than anything else.

Sora’s head had found the curve between his shoulder and his neck. His hair tickled Riku’s jaw, and his back was flat against his chest, and he was familiar and warm, his eyes half-lidded as he watched the flashing colors of the cartoon playing on the television screen. Riku wanted to die-- he couldn’t decide whether it was because Sora was in his lap and he was enjoying it, and wanted that to be the last thing he ever felt, or because Sora was in his lap, and he should hate it, and the fact that he didn’t made him hate himself, and maybe if he was dead, he wouldn’t feel like that. 

Eventually, he leaned his head away from Sora’s, trying to get as much distance between them as possible. “C’mon, seriously, get up. My leg’s falling asleep.” 

“Aw, but Riku,” Sora whined, dramatic and exaggerated, and accented by him wiggling in Riku’s lap, “you’re so comfortable! Even if you’ve got a bony lap and skinny legs!” 

Sora didn’t mean it the way he took it. Sora never meant things the way that Riku decided to interpret them during that time. Sora didn’t know about the hours Riku stood staring at himself in the mirror, angry at his body for not looking how he thought it was supposed to. He didn’t know about how Riku hadn’t eaten in three days, because he had a performance on Sunday, and he was a soloist and couldn’t afford to not look his best. He didn’t know that Riku had only slept two hours the night before, and the weed was mixing with the remnants of the coke and making him paranoid, that any comment about him would have set him off, no matter how benign, and Sora just happened to hit the shit lottery, and was rewarded by Riku forcefully standing up, dumping Sora from his lap onto the floor. 

“Ow! Hey, are you alright?”

“I need to pee,” was all Riku said, before he walked down the hall, and locked himself in the bathroom, lying down in the bathtub and half debating whether he should turn on the tap, and drown himself. In the end, he just fell asleep in there, and woke up two hours later, when Sora knocked on the door. 

“So, my dad bought me Street Fighter,” he said, through the wood of the door, “I brought it over as a surprise. Would you want to play it?” 

Riku pulled himself out of the bathtub, and combed his fingers through his long hair, before he opened the door, and joined Sora in the hall. “Sure, sounds good,” he agreed, and then walked back into the living room. 

They didn’t talk about what happened. They just played games until three in the morning, Riku soundly beating Sora every time, no matter which character he chose, and he liked to think that the incident was behind them.

He was wrong.

* * *

The day after he came home, Sora had to work. In the year since Riku had left, he had apparently gotten a job at the hardware store part-time, and he remorsefully informed Riku that he couldn’t hang out until after his shift. 

“It’s fine, Sora. I’m not going anywhere,” Riku pointed out, because Sora was acting like his time in his mother’s house was finite, as if he was just around for summer vacation, and would be leaving at the end of the month. No, Riku doubted he was going anywhere, for a long time. He’d be right were Sora expected him to be, if he needed to find him. 

“I know, but I just don’t want you to be sitting around by yourself all day!” Sora had sighed, and crossed his arms. 

Riku returned his sigh with an exasperated one of his own. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

In the end, when he woke up the next morning (or, at least what passed for morning for him, given that it was closer to noon than it was eleven) to the sound of someone knocking on his front door, he should have been more surprised to see Kairi there. But, he wasn’t, because he knew his friends too well; he knew that they talked to each other and made up little plans and schemes all the time thinking he wouldn’t pick up on it, despite the fact that he always did. 

“Sup, Kairi?” he mumbled, rubbing the crust of sleep still in the corners of his eyes, “It’s good to see you.”

“Hey!” she returned his greeting with much more enthusiasm and cheer, and when she reached out to give him a hug, Riku let her, though, he also only gave her a light pat on the back as she did so, and the embrace ended quickly. “Wow! You look so good! Did you cut your hair?” 

It was a stupid question. The last time he’d seen her his hair was past his shoulders, and hanging in his eyes. Now it was cropped closer to his jaw, and that was after two months of not being forced to keep it trimmed up. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “I kinda had to.” Part of the program included cutting his hair, which Riku hated, and was glad to be done with.

The implied mention of his rehab was like a bucket of water thrown on the flickering fire of Kairi’s attempted small talk. However, it only gave her pause for just a moment, before she smiled at him again, and decided to go with a different approach. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked, and when Riku shook his head, her grin only widened. “Awesome! Then we’re going to Denny’s!” 

Riku knew what she was doing, because Sora had done the same thing. They took him out to places in public, where it’d be noticed if he didn’t eat, he’d have to explain not only to his friends, but the waitress, and the host, why he wasn’t eating, and assurances of no appetite would fall on deaf ears. He couldn’t pull stunts like he did at home, where he said he’d already eaten, or he’d heat it up later, and then never eat anything at all. The method to their madness was an easy line to follow. 

It was also obvious that they simply wanted to get him out of the house. He’d been home less than twenty-four hours, and already the both of them had found reasons to take him out somewhere that wasn’t his living room couch. Riku had a laundry list of theories as to why. Regardless of their reasons though, he was fresh out of rehab and Sora and Kairi were trying to be helpful and supportive even if they hadn’t yet gotten the hang of it. So, he didn’t argue with her suggestion (not that he wanted to anyway). Instead, he just stepped aside so that Kairi could walk into the house, and then excused himself to get dressed, so they could head out. 

Kairi rollerbladed everywhere she had to go that was within city limits. It didn’t matter if it was down the street or across town, she would always throw on her blades to go anywhere, and that hadn’t changed in the thirteen months that Riku was gone. He offered to drive-- his mom left him a pair of keys to her old car-- but Kairi refused. 

“C’mon, it’s just a few blocks! Get on your bike, it’ll be good exercise!” she teased him, until finally Riku agreed. 

His bike hadn’t been touched in much longer than the year he was away, probably not since he’d gotten his license when he was sixteen, but it did well enough to let him follow behind Kairi as she lead their path on her skates. Once his bike was chained to the rack outside and Kairi swapped her rollerblades for a pair of flipflops she carried in her backpack, they were lead to a booth in the back corner of the restaurant, and left with menus, which Kairi dove into immediately. 

“Let me treat you,” Riku offered, and he didn’t even need to push to get Kairi to accept. 

“Sure! Sounds great. I’m gonna get a Grand Slam.” 

Riku just got a cup of coffee and two pieces of toast for himself, and by the time their plates arrived, they had already fallen deep into conversation, discussing everything from the Offspring concert coming up next month to the fact that in the year Riku was gone their old neighborhood playground had been completely remodeled, steel monkey bars and merry-go-rounds on asphalt replaced instead with colorful plastic tubes and slides in a bed of woodchips. Kairi recounted the memory of how Riku and Sora nearly catapulted her off the see-saw and gave her the scar on her elbow, and Riku pointed out that they had only pulled that stunt because Kairi dared them to. 

It was easy to talk to Kairi, because she always followed Riku’s lead. Wherever he wanted to go with a conversation, she’d follow it, and she didn’t push too far beyond those boundaries, though, sometimes he could tell that she wanted to.

He was stirring some cream into his second mug of coffee and Kairi was polishing off the last of her eggs when she paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, let out a little laugh, and said, “Man, Sora’s so happy you’re home. He talked about you the whole time you were gone.” 

Riku’s movements stopped as well, though the liquid in his cup continued to swirl and spin around his spoon for a moment longer. “I’m sure it wasn’t the whole time,” he deflected, after a beat, “I was gone awhile; he had to be busy with other stuff.” Busy having a life outside of Riku, a life that was probably a lot less complicated, one that didn’t involve someone who couldn’t keep their shit together, so much so that it bled into the lives of everyone else around him. 

Kairi snorted in response. “Please, it was every day. ‘Riku’ this, and ‘Riku’ that,” she said, and shoved the forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth, but continued to talk around the food as she chewed, “Sometimes it was just ‘I wonder what Riku’s doing’, or ‘I hope Riku’s okay,’ but usually it was, ‘When Riku gets home, I’m taking him to Disney,’ and ‘I can’t wait to be back with Riku’. It never stopped.” Two more mouthfuls of food allowed Riku a moment to process that, before Kairi spoke again, gesturing at Riku with her fork as she said, “He’s crazy about you, Riku. He always has been.”

“That’s just how Sora is,” he deflected again, not because he didn’t believe Kairi, but because he didn’t need to be reminded of his own feelings, he didn’t need to remember how he was crazy about Sora too. Because he’d literally gone crazy at one point, it felt like, and he’d nearly torn what relationship he did have with Sora to pieces because of it. He couldn’t risk ruining it again. He didn’t trust himself not to stumble and fall, and drag Sora down with him as he did. He couldn’t do that to him, not now that he was trying to fix things, not after he’d decided to make things right.

“I heard you’re pulling shifts at the 7-11,” Riku changed the subject, before Kairi could press the issue of Sora further. Clearly aware of his attempt, she gave him a flat look, but answered him anyway, describing the ins and outs of her part-time job, while Riku went back to his coffee.


	3. reruns all become our history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku receives an invitation.

The most contradictory aspect of ballet was the fact that it took countless years of practice going against the body’s natural impulses in order to make everything look so effortless. That, in an ironic way, also seemed to perfectly describe Riku’s life; he worked really hard to make it look like everything was easy for him. 

When he first started dancing, he was told he had a natural gift for it, thanks to his longer limbs and solid sense of balance. Perhaps in the beginning, that gave him some advantage, but by the time he’d moved on to the intermediate classes, it stopped being about his ability to hold perfectly still for long periods of time, and his leg to torso ratio. At that point, what gave him his edge was the hours he spent practicing, the nights he would stand in the center of his room in front of his mirror, perfecting his stances and the various positions, thinking back to every comment and instruction his teachers had said, and following them perfectly to the letter. His gift for ballet came at the cost of watching hours of cartoons on the television, and early mornings on weekends sleeping in. The approval and praise that came with dancing was given in exchange for the sleepovers Riku never went to, because he had rehearsal early the next morning, and the money that might have bought him a Nerf gun or Gameboy went to new slippers and class tuition instead. 

The same could be said for school. He was ahead of most of the kids in class not because he was some sort of genius, a prodigy of his time, but because he understood how to recognize patterns earlier than most, and he picked up on new concepts easily, putting him at a headstart. After second or third grade, however, schoolwork didn’t rely so much on just being able to tell how things were different, and so he had to start working harder there as well, to meet those same expectations of him. He read books at a higher reading level because it let him learn bigger words faster, he did math in his head just to get used to working out the problems on his own, and he started listening more to adults’ conversations, because their insight was often given more value than anything from his peers. As before, those around him simply thought that all of Riku’s intelligence came naturally to him, that he didn’t need to work as hard to accomplish the same as other kids his age. And he didn’t correct them, because it seemed better to be special, than it was to be simply hardworking; it was the gifted and talented ones that really stood out in the end. 

Most of the time, he didn’t mind the long hours, didn’t mind the missed trips to Disneyland. Even when he had to sacrifice those things in exchange for good grades and recognition in competitions, he still had Sora. 

Sora had lived across the street for as long as Riku could remember. He knew that his parents had moved into the neighborhood after Sora was born, but in Riku’s earliest memories, Sora had always been there. At first it was because both of their mothers were stay at home parents, and they often visited each other for lunch or coffee, and he and Sora by proxy spent a lot of time together. But, once they started getting older, and had ideas and desires of their own, they actively sought out each other’s company, never needing the encouragement of their mothers to play or explore together. 

Sora had always bemoaned that their houses weren’t any closer-- close enough that they could always run across the street and see each other, but too far to connect them with a telephone made from tin cans and string. They ended up settling for walkie talkies after Sora got them as gift for his seventh birthday, and Riku always kept his beside his bed, never far from reach, in case Sora ever needed him, always just the press of a button away from hearing his voice. They used those walkie talkies until the wires finally wore out when Riku was fourteen. 

Though the joke of a tin can telephone came up time and time again throughout the years, it hardly mattered by the time that Riku was eight years old. His parents’ divorce had been finalized the winter before, and his dad had been moved out and living up north since two years before that. During those years, Riku started spending more time at Sora’s house than his own, so much that Sora’s mom simply bought a trundle bed for him to sleep on instead of letting Riku make a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor, and he had a designated seat at the table, right beside Sora’s. He had a drawer of spare clothes, and a second toothbrush, and Sora’s parents started driving him to ballet practice and rehearsals, even after Sora quit ballet to pick up surfing with his dad instead. Sora’s house had always been better than his, with it’s living room outfitted with two couches (because one was never enough to seat all the people his family liked inviting over), and Sora’s playroom that was just a mess of Lego sets and stuffed toys. Riku’s house felt like one of those display rooms inside stores-- everything perfectly placed, nothing overly personal or distinctive on display, to reveal the nature of the sort of people who lived inside it. Sora’s house was decorated with pieces of both of his parents’ cultures, Hawaiian and Japanese artifacts and aesthetics artfully put together throughout the entire house, always accessible, always ready for questions and lessons. Meanwhile, the most Riku learned from his dad before he left was basic Korean and how to use chopsticks. 

Riku never had many friends-- he was both too busy with his various activities and too introverted to make more-- and the person he had always been closest to had always been Sora. There were kids in school he was acquainted with, and girls at the studio he got along with, but Sora was always the first one that Riku thought of when he heard the word ‘friend,’ and he had always believed that when it came to him, Sora would say the same. Because he had always been so certain of that fact, the introduction of Kairi should not have shaken him as badly as it did. 

Riku was seven, and Sora was six when Kairi moved into their neighborhood. She had lived up in the mountains of Colorado with her grandmother for the first years of her life. When she died, Kairi then got sent to L.A. to stay with an aunt and uncle she barely knew, who lived in the neighborhood. Her house was further down the same street that Sora and Riku’s was on, but that didn’t stop Sora from going to investigate the moment he saw a U-haul trailer in the driveway, and introducing himself when Kairi appeared. Riku followed his lead, introduced himself as well, though at the time he could have never anticipated how intrinsic Kairi would become in his daily life; he liked her well enough, but things had always been just him and Sora, and he couldn’t imagine them being any different. 

Kairi changed things. Sleepovers at Sora’s were no longer just ‘Riku and Sora’, they were now, ‘Riku and Sora and Kairi’. Their adventures through the neighborhood weren’t Sora following along after Riku’s lead, trusting him to take him to all the best places, it became days where Kairi had an idea of where they should go, and Sora would want to follow her instead, and Riku had to relent control, or be left behind. Where Sora was laid back and easily convinced, Kairi could be as stubborn as Riku was sometimes, and for the first time, he had someone he had to contend with, when there was never that dynamic before.

Sora had never enjoyed someone else’s company as much as he did Riku’s before.

Years later, Riku would recognize those feelings as jealousy. His best friend had made friends with someone else, and though Riku got along with Kairi fine, he had always thought that he and Sora had something different, that their relationship was unique. To him, he saw Sora’s relationship with Kairi as an imitation of his own, one that he didn’t understand why Sora needed, when he had him. Wasn’t Riku good enough on his own? Didn’t they always have plenty of fun together? Why should Kairi be just as important as him, when Riku had been all he needed before? Kairi, through no fault of her own, became a conduit for Riku’s doubts, the lightning rod for the early years of his fear of being inferior, and that feeling only got worse, when Riku entered middle school a year before both of them, and suddenly Sora was spending more time with Kairi, than he was with Riku. 

By that time, Sora had quit trying to do dance, and his weekends were taken up by going to the beach and surfing with his dad. When Riku could, he went along too, but it was never as frequent as Kairi, who had taken an immediate liking to Sora’s father, and the sport he was famous for. He taught Kairi how to surf right alongside Sora, and though she didn’t pick it up necessarily quickly, she was persistent, and that got her far. It wasn’t long before she was a better surfer than Riku, who eventually stopped trying to do it altogether, once everyone else had surpassed him in it. 

It was in seventh grade that he felt the first crack begin to form in the foundation of his relationship with Sora. It was also in seventh grade that he started using the Ritalin. Maybe if Sora had been there, he wouldn’t have been so easily tempted. Maybe if Kairi hadn’t been interjected into their lives, Riku would have never even thought to consider using drugs. But that would have unfairly blamed either of them for Riku’s mistakes, when they had nothing to do with them. It was all Riku, it was all problems that had existed long before those issues surfaced.

Maybe Riku was always meant to fall.

* * *

Kairi dropped Riku back off at his house after breakfast before heading out for her shift at work. For the next few hours, Riku spent his time keeping busy around the house-- doing laundry, picking up his room, skimming the pool in his backyard. It was after five and he was reading a book on the couch when the doorbell rang, but he didn’t even have time to get up before the door opened, and Sora stepped inside, the habit long ingrained in him from years of the two of them having free reign of each other’s houses. 

“Hey!” he greeted, and then when he caught sight of what Riku was doing, his smile shifted from friendly, to teasing, “Enjoy your day of being a bum?”

“Nothing better,” Riku dryly retorted back, and slipped a bookmark between the pages to keep his place, “I’ll have you know that I only watched two episodes of soap operas today. I believe Vanessa is having Antoni’s baby.”

“Isn’t she married to Jason? The tramp!”

Riku laughed, and Sora laughed, and it just felt good. Getting to his feet, Riku moved to head towards the kitchen, speaking to Sora over his shoulder as he did. “You just get off work? I can get you a drink or something if you want. My mom’s got some pasta leftover that’s probably still good.” 

“Actually,” Sora said, and his voice was not far behind Riku’s, as he followed along behind him, “My mom wanted to invite you over for dinner. My parents wanted to see how you were doing.” 

Riku stopped in front of the fridge-- the plain, top of the line stainless steel fridge that his mom had gotten to match the stainless steel oven, and the stainless steel dishwasher. There was no magnets or adornments on it-- not like the fridge in Sora’s house, which had keepsakes and souvenirs from all sorts of places scattered across it, relics of Sora’s various school art projects still proudly displayed, in between countless menus for a variety of take-out places, some with favorite dishes circled, and others with special orders written down so they weren’t forgotten. Just the mention of Sora’s parents brought forth a medley of thoughts and feelings about them, and Riku went quiet for a long moment, as he seemed to try and sort through them, and think of an answer to say. 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Sora assured him, not rushed, not trying desperately to assuage Riku’s fears. It was as if he had expected that reaction from him, and had already prepared an answer for it. “If you’re not ready, we can wait. They understand.”

Of course they understood. Riku doubted there was anything that they couldn’t understand. For as long as he had known them, both of Sora’s parents had seemed to be as emotionally perceptive and attentive as they came, never ones to push boundaries, but always knowing when something was needed. It was no wonder of where Sora got it from, though it was a skill Riku had seen him have to develop over time. Kalani and Hinata were already masters of it. 

After moment passed, one where Riku just started at the door of the fridge, saying nothing, until finally, he turned to face Sora, and quietly said, “Sure.” Sparing a small smile with him, he tacked on, “Probably better that I do it sooner than later; I’m sure Hina’s already mad at me.” 

“Mom’s not mad,” Sora argued, but after a moment, smiled too, “She’ll just be happy that you’re coming over. She was asking your mom when you were supposed to be coming home for like, the past three months.” 

Riku nearly remarked on how pointless that was; his mom was the worst person to ask, given that she didn’t even know he was coming home, until the week before he arrived. He hadn’t even seen his mom yet; she left him a set of keys and some money on the table, but she was out of town until the end of the week, and that was if she planned to come home at all. He knew that she was visiting her boyfriend up in Vallejo, and those trips never ended when she said they would, and so Riku stopped planning anything based on her estimates. 

“Then let me take a shower, and I’ll head over,” Riku said instead, with a smile at Sora, “I’ll meet you there in an hour.”


	4. did you lose yourself somewhere out there?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku makes a phone call. Then, dinner is served.

Rehab had a funny way of making him lose track of time. 

It was probably better that way; better that he didn’t know how long he had been at the center, didn’t know how long it had been since he had seen his friends, how long it had been since his parents bothered to call. 

At first, the only way he was able to tell the passage of time was through the weight he began to gain. He wasn’t allowed a scale in his room-- the program he was on forbid it-- but Riku knew his body. He knew what it felt like when it had food in it, knew what it felt like when there was more weight being carried than usual, because he had spent so many months upon years focused on learning how to feel even the slightest changes in his body, so that he could control it. 

The first goal of his program was to get him clean. It was an immersive program, which meant hours locked up in detox, constant surveillance, and little to no sleep. The last part wasn’t part of the medically approved plan to get the cocaine out of his system-- it was just a fun side effect. 

Over the course of a month, Riku slept the equivalent of maybe two proper nights of rest sprinkled throughout it. It hadn’t been difficult to not sleep for that long-- he’d been running on a similar schedule for years-- but it was difficult to do it without any drugs in his system, and the insomnia, along with the crash and withdrawal, gave him plenty of nights of absolute misery, where he contemplated trying to jump out of the predictably sealed windows, or smothering himself with one of his pillows, just to escape it. 

The only upside to the early detox was that they didn’t care about the fact that he wasn’t eating; most people recovering from drugs didn’t eat anyway, and so it wasn’t a priority to check up on him, and make sure that he was putting anything into his mouth, and keeping it down. But, by the second month, he’d dropped another twelve pounds, and by then the center remembered he was there for a dual-ended program, and so along with being in the detox facility, Riku was sent to classes and meetings for his eating disorder during the day. Like with the drugs, when it came to his eating disorder, the expectations were much the same: monitored behavior, lots of meetings with his psychiatrist, group sessions where he listened to other people talk through the various stages of their recovery. For awhile, all the days tended to blend together, because of how similar each one was to the next.

Until the day he woke up, and felt heaviness in his belly.

It wasn’t from a feeling of dread, as he’d so often gotten used to associating that sensation with. It was the feeling of being full, of there actually being food inside of him, food that he’d put in there himself, and that wasn’t supposed to fuel him for the next three or four days. He had food in him because he’d eaten dinner the night before, and he was going to eat breakfast later that morning. In a constant cycle, he’d keep replenishing himself, keep putting food inside of him, and that was supposed to replace the drugs and the caffeine and the anxiety that had been keeping him going since he was sixteen. It was a thought that made Riku nauseous just thinking about, and so he tried not to think about it at all.

But he kept gaining weight.

First, it was in his hips and his waist, that he began to see the change. Then it was his ribs, and his legs, and his arms, bit by bit filling out more and more, with each day that passed. By the time that it reached his hands, Riku had relapsed twice, and had to be put on IVs because he was even refusing water. Six months into his recovery he looked into a mirror and saw a face he nearly didn’t recognize looking back at him, one without the gaunt, hollowed cheekbones and deeply bruised circles beneath his eyes. He forced himself to look at that face in the mirror every day, until it stopped looking so strange to him.

He wasn’t allowed any visitors for the first 12 weeks. It was to prevent any sort of complications, a tactic that would hopefully weed out any fair-weather friends and drug dealers that he might make contact with, when he was at his most vulnerable. He could have gotten phone calls after that, but he didn’t accept any, not until he was five months in, and even then, only from his parents at first. It was his dad who, with a heavy sigh evident in his tone, told him to call Sora back before he drove everyone who had any contact with Riku crazy, because he’d apparently been calling both of his parents at least twice a week, hoping to get information about how to get into touch with him. It still took him a week after that to make the call, and even then, he kept it brief; he just said he didn’t mean to worry Sora, and that he was doing better now, and he’d call him later, and then he hung up, because if he stayed on any longer he knew he’d start talking and never stop, and he couldn’t speak to Sora just yet.

He wasn’t ready. He needed to figure out the right things to say.

In the thirteen months he was gone, he only spoke to Sora six times over the phone, and almost all of them were in the last three months. One of the stages of his recovery included making amends, and so Sora was the first person he called; his counselor suggested maybe inviting him to see Riku in person, but he thought nothing could be worse than that. At least over the phone, he wouldn’t have to see the disappointment and anger that Sora surely (and justifiably) would have on his face as he apologized, and so he just made the call inside the small phone booth, trembling the whole time.

_“...all calls are recorded…”_

The phone rang once, rang twice, before there was the audible click of the receiver being picked up, followed by a voice.

“Hello?”

“Sora?” There was a question at the end of that, not because he wasn’t sure who picked up the phone-- it was more a request, almost a plea. _Will you talk to me, once you know who this is?_

“Riku?” He heard the inquiry in Sora’s voice as well, but his was from surprise. Then, “Oh man! Riku!” He sounded so energized, so happy, that Riku almost couldn’t understand it at first. Why did he sound so excited, upon realizing that Riku had called? “Holy shit, I’m so-- Oh, oops, sorry Mom,” his voice sounded a little further away there, somewhat muffled, and Riku could just imagine Sora putting his hand over the mouthpiece as he apologized to his mother for swearing, “I’m so happy you called! It’s been forever, Riku! Did you go and forget about me?” 

Sora was teasing, he could hear it in his voice. On the other end of the line, all the way in LA, he knew Sora was smiling, his eyes bright and tickled with mirth, his nose scrunched up in the way it only got when he was having a laugh at Riku’s expense. 

Riku wanted to tell him that he could never forget about him. That Sora had become a part of himself, that Sora was in his blood and in his bones, that he could no more forget Sora than he could forget to breathe, as intrinsically tied together as the two ideas were. He thought about Sora constantly-- with nothing but time to think on his hands, he’d thought about him even more frequently than usual, spending hours of his day ruminating on everything, from wondering what Sora was doing, to thinking back on the past four years, and how terribly he acted, how unfairly he’d treated him. 

Instead, he said, “Probably. It’s been pretty easy, without you talking my ear off every day.” 

First Sora squawked in indignation, then he laughed, a deep, hearty sound that Riku knew he inherited from his dad. He laughed from the bottom of his chest, until it shook his whole body with the force of it. Riku could remember the sight of it, the sensation of it, from all the times he and Sora had laughed together, from all the times Sora had leaned against him, when his laughter made it hard for him to stand up straight. 

“Well that’s your fault for not calling me, dummy!” Sora pointed out, as if that explained everything. There was no accusation in his voice, no anger, no resentment. Riku almost wished there was; if Sora was mad at him, that was a feeling he could understand, given all that had happened between them. For Sora to be something else-- something Riku didn’t even know what to call _(oblivious? willfully ignorant?)_ \-- it threw him off, and he felt himself struggling to decide how to balance this conversation. 

“How’s it going there?” he ended up asking, “What’s the weather like?” he tacked on, though felt stupid nearly immediately afterward.

“Not too bad,” Sora said, and Riku heard the brief rustle of the telephone receiver-- likely from his shrug, “Hot like usual. Been good for swimming though.”

“Oh,” Riku murmured, “It’s raining here.”

Realistically, logically, he knew that Santa Barbara was nearly 100 miles away from LA. He knew that it was far away; that had been part of the point. And yet, somehow, hearing that, hearing Sora describe the sky outside as being different from his own, it left Riku feeling empty, hollowed out, as if someone had come by and scraped out all the good feelings he might have been beginning to have up until that moment, leaving him with nothing but reminders of distance, and the reality the sound of Sora’s voice had him escaping. 

“Hey, Riku,” Sora began to say, interrupting his thoughts, “Are you doing okay? How is everyth--”

“I have to go,” Riku cut him off, before Sora could finish his thought, “Sorry, I’m not allowed to talk on the phone very long yet. I’ll call you again soon, okay?” he extended an offer. _Please, let me call you back,_ a voice in his head silently said. 

“Sure,” Sora said, without hesitation, “I’m holding you to it. I miss you, Riku.”

“Bye Sora,” was all he said. It was all he could say; if he tried anything else, everything would have spilled from his mouth in a rush, every thought, every fear, every dream he ever had, and he couldn’t burden Sora with that. 

He hadn’t been ready to talk to him yet.

* * *

An hour after Sora left his house, Riku stood on the mat set out before Sora’s front door. Made of stiff, dry bristles, it was perfect for brushing off any lingering sand from people’s shoes-- a reasonable concern in Sora’s family-- and Riku instinctively scuffed his feet against it, out of force of habit. Unlike with Sora, when he knocked on the door, he didn’t immediately open it afterwards, because it had been over a year, and and he was being wary of possible boundaries, but he wasn’t left waiting long before the door opened, and he was met with the sight of a familiar face. 

It wasn’t the shorter, slighter frame of Sora who stood in the doorway, but instead was a man that stood taller than Riku, even at his own above average height. He was broad shouldered and barrel chested, and thanks to the fact that the man wasn’t wearing a shirt, Riku could see the expanse of tattoos that decorated his dark brown skin, designs that Riku had long ago memorized, had been told the extensive meanings and symbolism of. He lifted his eyes, and met the dark ones of Sora’s father, and for just an instant, there was a beat of silence between them. Then, Kalani’s face split into a wide grin, and his deep voice boomed, “Riku!”

A large, firm hand landed on his shoulder, and then Kalani was speaking in a mix of English and Hawaiian, words that Riku had picked up the meanings of after a childhood of hearing them. “Finally back, eh? Yeah, yeah, good, good!” With his hand on Riku’s shoulder, Kalani pulled him in the door, and Riku was barely able to quickly slip off his shoes at the entryway before he was being lead further inside, Sora’s father continuing to talk to him in a rush the whole way. “You got a haircut, ah? Look at that, can see your eyes now, _keiki_ , how long since we’ve got to see them?” 

“Everyone’s said that,” Riku laughed a bit, and Kalani laughed louder, clapping him on the shoulder. 

He was guided through the house and into the kitchen, where Sora’s mother, a woman from who Sora got much of his features from, was standing at the island, stirring a large pitcher of something red filled with slices of tropical fruit. 

“Oh, Riku, you’re here!” Hinata greeted him with the same loud and cheery enthusiasm that her husband did, and she left the pitcher to go meet Riku with a hug, and quick peck on the cheek. “It’s been so long! Look at you!” she said, as she pulled back, but only just enough to keep Riku within arms’ length and give him another, more thorough look over, “God, you look great. Got your color back. I can see your face,” she said, and reached up to playfully twist Riku’s nose. He smiled at her. 

“Yeah, I keep hearing that. I get it; like a sheepdog with a haircut. I’ve heard it all.” 

Hinata and Kalani laughed, and he was given another quick hug, before she pulled away from him completely, and stepped away. “Sora’s just getting the firepit ready, I’ll go see how he’s doing,” she excused herself, before she walked over to the back door, and stepped outside. 

Left in the kitchen with Kalani, Riku, for the first time in his life, felt uncomfortable in Sora’s home. He could never remember there ever being a moment where he wasn’t completely at ease, where he felt better about being in Sora’s home than he did his own. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, and glanced through the corner of his eye towards Kalani, who was looking directly at him. 

“Been hard not seeing you around,” the man said, and Riku apologetically inclined his head, “We was worried about you. Crazy, you know? Was real worried about how you were doing.” 

Riku nodded, and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I just… I messed up,” he finally said, the only words he seemed to be able to say, and his eyes lowered to the floor, “I really messed up. But, I’m doing better now. I promise. I won’t mess up again.”

Kalani always smelled like the wax he used on his board, coconut and oil and a little bit of sandalwood. It was a smell that seemed to seep out of his pores; even when he came out of the water, he always smelled like that. Riku recalled how Kalani lent him a towel once while they were on the beach when he was a kid, and he took it home. He had gotten upset when his mom washed it, because then it just smelled like the lavender laundry soap she bought. He couldn’t explain why he thought it, but he had always felt that Kalani smelled like how all dads were supposed to smell; not like his, who as far as Riku could remember just smelled like expensive cologne that burned his nostrils and cigarettes. 

Kalani, like Sora, never shied away from hugging, regardless of who he was with-- Riku was fairly certain he would have tried to give the President a hug if he ever met him, and likely end up wrestling with Secret Service for the effort. But, just like with Sora, Riku never minded Kalani’s hugs; probably because they were hard, bone-crushing, in all the best ways, and Riku felt like he was being swallowed up in something safe and comforting. 

Kalani put both his arms around Riku, and pulled him into his chest, squeezing him so hard that Riku was certain he felt a few vertebrae shift out of place. The breath was squeezed out of his lungs in a wheeze, but the sound only made Kalani laugh, and hold onto him that much tighter. 

“You’re doing good, Riku,” he said, the low timbre of his voice vibrating just beside his ear, “I’m real proud of you. Doing real good.” 

He wished he could have held back the tears that came to his eyes. He didn’t want to cry in front of Kalani-- the man clearly hated seeing anyone cry, and he’d fuss and worry over what to do to make it stop, and Riku didn’t want to draw all that attention to himself. He also didn’t feel as if he deserved it, as if he deserved anything, from the embrace, to the kindness, to the heavy, yet reassuring weight of Kalani’s big hand patting the middle of his back. He did a good job of not making a sound, and when Kalani pulled back, he kept his head lowered a bit, as he reached up to try and rub at his eyes, without exposing himself too much. But, Kalani saw everything, and then Riku was being crushed into another hug, and being told gently, “Hey, hey, you’re doing fine, you’re doing great! You don’t need to cry about anything. What’s the tears for, ay?” 

By the time Hinata came back inside Riku had stopped crying and cleaned up his face, and then she was ushering Riku into the backyard, exchanging places with him. 

“Go get something to eat out there before Sora eats it all. We’ll just finish putting stuff together in here.” Riku knew better than to protest, and allowed Hinata to nudge him outside, and slide the door shut behind him.

Sora’s backyard had always been big--bigger than Riku’s especially--and the perimeter was lined with lanterns, with a large patio and a pergola and a firepit as the predominant features. Sora’s parents were from Hawaii and loved to entertain, and so their backyard was always ready for company to come over, always set up for a party, big or small. Riku thought back on countless nights throughout their lives where he was their only guest, and they still set everything up, as if he was some person of honor, and not just the kid from across the street. 

The two of them were sitting in opposite deck chairs, drinking bottles of Ramune while a plate of grilled kebabs sat on the table between them. Sora’s dad had gotten a speaker system sometime last summer, he was told, and underneath the cadence of their conversation and their laughter, there was a local pop radio station softly playing. 

It felt a lot like being fourteen again. Fourteen, and easy, without the baggage of anger and anxiety and secrets weighing between them. 

“Maybe I should apply at the hardware store,” Riku remarked, as he slowly rocked the bottle of soda in his hand, making the marble inside go _clink clink clink_ against the sides.

“Ugh, why would you wanna do that?” Sora made a face, “Do you wanna sit at the counter with me all day, making keys for people?” 

Riku thought about it, and didn’t consider that all too bad of an option. “It’d be better than sitting at home all day,” he shrugged.

Sora’s face flickered with understanding, and then sympathy. “Well, I’m sure you could get the job, if you wanted. But I think you’d be happier somewhere else.” 

“Then why are you there, if it sucks so bad?” Riku asked, glancing over at Sora through his growing bangs. 

Sora paused, visibly, and Riku’s head tilted up further. Silently, he waited for him to answer, but it wasn’t until another minute later that Sora did. 

“You know, saving up for college expenses. To help my dad out. I didn’t get a great scholarship or anything,” he explained. 

Riku felt a hollow pang in the pit of his stomach. Right, of course. Sora would be going to college. Sora still had hopes for a decent future, he still had a chance of doing something with himself. There was no question that he’d be going to college. 

“Oh, cool,” Riku said, and was impressed with his ability to keep his tone casual and light, “That’s a good idea. Save up now, so you don’t have to worry about it later.” 

Silence fell like a blanket between them, and Riku’s eyes were locked onto the marble within his bottle of soda, following the slow, twisting movement of it, as he swirled the bottle. 

“Are you going to try to go to school?” Sora asked, “I mean, I’m sure your dad could probably pay--”

“My dad isn’t interested in paying for anything at the moment,” Riku interrupted Sora, his eyes not lifting up, and his brows furrowing, “He wasn’t happy about the couple of grand he dropped to send me to rehab; I think asking him for tuition would be asking a lot of him, considering.” 

“Yeah, I guess,” Sora murmured, and Riku could hear the note of discomfort in his voice, “Well, what about scholarships? Didn’t you get early acceptance into--” 

Again, Riku cut him off, before he could finish. “Do you think I could honestly go to _Julliard_?” he asked, incredulously, “With a drug charge on my record?” A shake of his head, a snort of disbelief. “And besides, that was over a year ago. I’m sure they’ve taken it back since then.” 

“You earned that acceptance, Riku! You worked so hard on it, you really were so good! They’d be stupid not to accept you!” 

_Were. ‘You were so good.’_

He knew that Sora didn’t mean anything by it, but that choice of words stood out to him, ringing and echoing in his ears, like a thousand different alarms. 

“Yeah, I was good at dancing once. Who knows if that’s still true?” he muttered, and took another swig of his drink. 

If he wanted to sit and wallow in his self-pity, he wasn’t given long to do so. Before he had the opportunity to realize what was happening, Sora had gotten to his feet, and stepped forward, grabbing Riku’s bottle and placing it on the table, before he took both of his hands in his, and forced him to stand too. “Sora, what--”

“Dance with me!” he ordered, but it was said with a smile, “C’mon, Riku, you can’t be that out of practice.”

He was pulled away from the deck chairs, and into the grass, the two of them standing beneath where the string of lights crossed in the center of the yard. Sora had his back to him, and leaned back against him, heavily at first, without warning, and so Riku had to catch him, to prevent both of them from falling over.

His hands on Sora’s waist, Sora’s back against his chest, and his body moving in a faint sway… all of it triggered instincts, long ingrained and completely subconscious. Riku’s back straightened, his feet found second position, and he breathed slowly, every muscle in his body going taunt, seizing up, awaiting the cue for the dance to begin.

But the dance Sora had in mind isn’t structured or practiced or perfect. It was his hands holding onto Riku’s where they sat around his waist, it was him tilting his head back so that it was tucked beneath Riku’s chin. His movements weren’t graceful arches of his arms and sweeps of his legs-- they were loose and irregular shifts of his weight from heel to toe, rocking from side to side, while his head bobbed along to the tempo of the song that was playing on the stereo. Sora’s dancing, like Sora himself, was formless and simple, but heartfelt and carefree, and Riku wished that he could dance and live the way he could, rather than just stumble after his lead, and mutter a soft, “Sorry,” under his breath as his shoe caught the back of Sora’s sandal. 

“Oh, haha!” Sora laughed, while pulling away, and the swell of cold air that suddenly rushed between the gap of their bodies made Riku’s breath catch, until Sora turned himself around, so that they were standing face to face. “This should be better!”

One hand found Riku’s, lacing their fingers together. The other grabbed his other wrist, to guide Riku’s hand back to his hip, and he held it there until Riku tightened his grip, and then dropped his hand to place his own on Riku’s shoulder. 

“Now, where were we?”

They weren’t really anywhere before. They were just standing around and swaying to music. But, Riku supposed that was as good of a starting point as any, and so that’s what he began doing-- holding onto Sora, as he began to shift and shuffle and sway, pulling Sora right along with him, as the music continued playing in the background. To Riku’s ears though, the sound might as well be a thousand miles away; all he could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears, and the irregular beating of his own heart, as he stared into Sora’s eyes, and danced with him. 

It was much easier than he remembered.


	5. life is more than who we are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku sees fireworks.

Three weeks had gone by, and things had, in their own way, settled into a routine. Riku looked for work, applying for any part time jobs in the area. He and Sora hung out whenever Sora wasn’t working, and Kairi joined them sometimes too, though her schedule was much less open than theirs was, given the extra hours she was pulling before summer was over. 

Riku had begun exercising again, less because he wanted to get back into shape, and more because he needed something to do, during the hours that Sora was gone during the day working at the hardware store. He began driving his mom’s car to the ballet studio twenty minutes away, and spent some extra money he found in his sock drawer (he pretended he didn’t know what he had been saving it for, before rehab) to get admission into the facility. He ran into a few people he recognized from time to time, but the only person he ever saw with any regularity was Aqua, who had come back from her internship, and seemed to be doing the same thing that Riku was, and simply trying to keep in practice. 

“It’s good to see you, Riku,” she had told him, a week after he started going back to the studio. “You should consider trying out for the winter production; they don’t have enough male soloists.” 

He hadn’t mentioned the suggestion to Sora; Riku hadn’t decided if he intended to do anything with Aqua’s idea in the first place, and he didn’t need Sora pushing him one way or the other. But, it had been weighing heavily on his mind, and so he was glad for a distraction, which was what Sora provided him, when he got off of work early one day, and came home carrying two bags filled to the brim with mysterious packages.

“They were all on sale since the holiday’s over!” Sora said, after Riku peeked inside, and saw that the bags were laden with fireworks, “There was some guys selling them in the store parking lot. They were a steal!” 

That was how the two of them ended up on the beach later that night, after most of the tourists and surfers had long since gone home. They set themselves up with a blanket and a cooler full of juice pouches and a few ice cream sandwiches, which Sora had already helped himself to three of, before he raced out into the surf to rinse off where he’d gotten himself sticky. 

He came back to where Riku was sitting with his hair plastered to his head and dripping wet, and Riku refused to let him get on the blanket until he dried off a bit, which Sora did by shaking himself like a dog, and splattering Riku with water. 

“Ass!” he scolded him between laughs, and swung his leg out to trip Sora, who tumbled to the sand while laughing too.

“Here, give me the bag,” Sora requested, holding his hand out, and Riku did as he asked, handing over one of the bags they had brought with them. Sora then moved away, further down the sand, closer to the water, and began setting up one of the fireworks, while Riku watched from the blanket. 

Seawater and sweat made the sand stick to Sora’s skin in patches. Riku found himself transfixed on the splotch of sand that was in between Sora’s shoulder blades, just out of reach for Sora to brush off himself. While Riku watched, Sora crouched down in the sand again, using one hand to shelter the lighter as he clicked the trigger with the other, until finally a small flame sparked to life, and he was able to hold it to the fuse. It caught quickly, and Sora scrambled back, his feet sliding a bit on the soft sand, before he landed on his rear on the blanket next to Riku, just as the firework shot off, flying into the air, and exploding several feet above their heads with a loud pop and shower of green and yellow sparks. A second after the first, another charge fired out from the barrel, and made a similar show, though this time with a shower of red and blue. Riku shifted, about to get up so that he could light the next round, but before he could stand, Sora took hold of his hand, and pulled him back down. 

“Wait,” he said, his voice soft, and he pointed off to the side, over the water, “Look.”

It seemed that someone else further down the beach was setting off fireworks as well, and so he and Sora ended up lying back on the blanket and watching them instead, deciding to save lighting their own for later. The fun came from the show, after all, and it was even better when someone else was doing the work. 

Riku was the first one who moved to lay on his stomach, propping his head up with his hands, but soon Sora was doing the same beside him, and the two of them watched the colorful showers of sparks explode over the water in comfortable silence, the only sound coming from the low hum of the waves, and the distant whistle and crackle of ignited gunpowder. 

“Oh, look at that one,” Riku muttered, as one of the fireworks spun in the air, creating an almost floral or sunburst shape. The only reply he received from Sora was the sudden sensation of his head dropping onto his shoulder, and the warmth of his body pressing close to him. 

In that moment, Riku was hyper aware of countless things: the grit of the sand that had gotten onto the blanket beneath him, the salty smell of the sea, the faint breeze that brushed through his hair. But most importantly, he was aware of how warm Sora’s body was, how soft the skin of his shoulder felt against his own, and the movement of his head, as he tilted it upwards, just as Riku turned his to look at Sora, and their lips met in a kiss. 

“Wha…” he whispered, numbly, his eyes wide, and body stiff, “S-Sora?”

Sora didn’t say anything; he only exhaled against Riku’s mouth, and then kissed him again, and in that moment Riku was so happy he could die. 

“I love you.” It wasn’t until he opened his eyes, and looked into Sora’s face, that Riku realized he had been the one that had spoken. Once that detail settled in, he felt himself sharply intake a breath, as his entire body went rigid. 

He waited. He waited for Sora to pull away, for Sora to tell him that he didn’t feel the same. He waited for Sora to say that he had lost any right to say that to him, after all the shit he had pulled, after the year of no contact, and the five years before that where he was insufferable and terrible. He had been a mess, and he didn’t know if he would ever truly not be a mess, ever again. Sora surely knew he didn’t deserve to put up with someone like that.

“I love you too,” Sora answered instead, with a smile, and it was Riku who initiated their third kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Riku's perspective. Other characters with their own stories are to follow!


	6. 13 Stitches is a NOFX Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A narrator change with an author change. Isa gains a scar and a bone deep sense of resentment. Third Eye Blind is on the radio.

Lea, who’s parents were leftovers from the Flower Power Movement 30 years prior that just never left. Lea, who lived in a VW bus until he was 10 parked anywhere that wouldn’t get them towed in Venice Beach. Lea, who had a smoking problem by the time he was 15. Lea who listened to Best Brains and Black Flag and Wasted Youth but probably didn’t understand a damn thing they were singing about. Lea who tattooed a teardrop on his cheekbone with a sewing needle and a bic pen without knowing what it meant. Lea who got in over his head every day of his life, but never once broke a sweat. Lea who’d always passed the buck, who’d never taken a fall in his life, Isa realized in that moment, staring at the torn lining of the roof of Lea’s van, probably never would.

This was his piece de resistance. This was a testament to just how goddamn good he was.

Elrena and Lauriam bailed the minute his blood colored the pavement. He hadn’t expected them to stay. He probably wouldn’t have wanted them to. Lea hovered, at first, only to disappear into the dark, but it was Dem that had yanked his own shirt over his head to pull it tight around his skull. It was Dem that sat him down in the back of his beat down Neon and paced around a hospital waiting room barefoot and in nothing but a sports bra and basketball shorts. Dem would never get his shirt back, surely the hospital would incinerate it - for some reason the blood in Dem’s shirt pressed on his mind more than any portion of the rest of the night.

The doctor said he should be in more pain than he was, the way the muscle was torn, the way the cross of the two gashes in his forehead gaped open to pinkish bone beneath. It wasn’t that he wasn’t in pain, more that languishing in it didn’t accomplish anything. It wasn’t all that different from getting it, really.

The doctor asked what happened. All Isa could grit out was, “accident”. Further questions weren’t asked. The rest of the procedure passed in silence, punctuated by Isa sniffing against the blood running down his nose and down his throat.

The doctor had said the blood settling in the whites of his eyes would be reabsorbed, the blackish bruising around the laceration that made his eyes look sunken to the back of his skull would fade. The blood soaking his shirt own would wash away. The dull throb between his eyes would fade. But the muscle damage through his corrugator (eyebrow, it turned out, that meant) may not heal, and the lopsided scowl now stapled into his face may be permanent, the doctor said.

It was probably fine, he reasoned to himself. He wasn’t sure how many reasons he had to do anything _but_.

The nurse had offered him a mirror, when instructing him how to keep the wound clean, but he had declined. He hadn’t really needed it when Dem, who’d never been able to be anything but transparently honest whether he’d wanted to be or not, wouldn’t look him in the face when he walked back into the lobby. The way his face blanched, the tiny gasp that betrayed him before looking resolutely to his feet, and the twitchy way he’d look over at him in the passenger seat said enough.

“You, uh. Got somewhere you wanna be, buddy?” he’d asked him after adjusting the rear view mirror a suspicious number of times.

He could have gone home, but he didn’t have any kind of excuse that would set his mother at ease that this was ‘an accident’, no story he could tell that wouldn’t send his father looking for those men himself. He could have gone home, but they would see him, and he wasn’t ready for that. But the rage that had settled in his bones, the rage that was threatening to tear him apart from the inside, the rage that Lea had put there was less to bear than facing either of them in the state he was in.

So he told Dem to take him to Lea’s. Because in the end, there was nowhere else for him to go.

Lea had the back door of his van propped open, an open can of spaghettios in one hand, a lit cigarette and a spoon in the other - taking turns eating and drags from the cigarette, looking, perhaps, the most skeletal Isa had ever seen him. His vision was still hazy, it hurt to try to strain to focus, the novacane starting to ebb away and the heartbeat he could feel in his forehead becoming more persistent. Between the blood and the tears in his eye Lea looked like a small fire sloping out of the back of the Chevy Beauville.

“Shit.” he heard, accompanied by the clank of a can against the bumper. “Shit Isa, holy shit.”

The suspension of the van creaked (a testament to how terrible it was considering how little Lea weighed) and suddenly Lea’s hand was pressed against his cheek. Lea always somehow managed to feel warm, like he had a fever. Maybe he really was a small fire. “Shit.”

“You were there, Lea.” was all he could manage, slowly. Lea wasn’t there, not like Dem was there, wasn’t there when he was told there was no way he wasn’t going to be marked for life from this. He was hardly there when he’d been forced to his knees on the wet pavement and a knife pressed between his eyes. But the adrenaline that had probably kept him alive was cooling in his veins, the rage he’d felt melting into something closer to exhaustion.

“Yeah sure,” he could feel Lea’s breath across his cheek as he laughed bitterly “but you kinda look worse now that they cleaned you up.”

_You’d know that if you’d been there._

Isa said nothing, he felt as though he existed outside of his body. Watching himself. Unsure if he wanted to pull the staples from his face and really make Lea see the blood on his hands or if he wanted to lean into the hand at his cheek, contended and warm for the rest of his life.

“You uh. You staying here tonight?” Lea’s hand was gone, and his cheek felt cold. “Can’t go home to Hala with a fucked up face stoned out of your mind on painkillers, right?” that attempt at levity was back in his voice, like it always was. Nothing was ever really serious, was it?

“Yeah.” was all he’d said in return. He didn’t feel like telling Lea just how terrified the prospect of lying to his parents about where he’d been or the circumstances that left him with 13 staples and 24 stitches across the center of his face. Explaining to them the depths of bad judgement and desperate clawing at an uncertain hope that his friendship with Lea had pushed him to. He didn’t feel like explaining to Lea what the doctors had explained to him. He didn’t feel like telling Lea the kind of pain he was likely to wake up in when the local wore off, how painfully sober he was (perhaps because of, perhaps in spite of the pain) and that they hadn’t shoved him back into Dem’s car with pockets full of Dilaudid to share. He was prepared to let Lea live in whatever reality Lea had been born into, which probably included a free hook up to a prescription grade high, and which certainly didn’t include any sense of responsibility for the last 4 hours of Isa’s life.

He hadn’t expected an apology. It surely wouldn’t come.

“Yeah sure, for sure. Always room for you.”

Isa would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much. (His face? The rest of him? Who could say?)

Lea burned down two more cigarettes out the back door of the van. Isa excused himself to the pile of blankets and sleeping bags Lea had designated as his bed, staring at the torn lining of the roof, feeling not too dissimilar, but was pulled from the comparison as Lea heaved the back door closed, leaving only the light from the tapedeck of the murmuring boombox in the passenger seat and the distant orange street light to light the cab. Lea settled back onto his elbows yanking his pants over his boney hips without much preamble and kicking them into the corner before he too sunk into the pile of second hand sleeping bags and blankets stolen out of moving vans.

> _I don’t see you anymore, since the hospital_

Isa knew, in the pit of his stomach that seemed to be falling farther away by the second, that he shouldn’t have come to Lea’s. He knew they would lay here, that Lea would ignore the staples and bruises in his face and any sense of shame he may have been harboring, that he would laugh about the whole thing as though Isa had been in on the joke the whole time. That they’d get high and sleep it off and the hazy memory of even this most lasting damage would be gone in that same haze. And whether he wanted to or not, he’d forgive him. Because he didn’t know what to call the ache that gripped his lungs for 8 years in Lea’s company, and he didn’t know how to return the casual gestures of familiarity and care that Lea gave generously and only to him and maybe none of that really mattered because Lea always made forgiveness seem like a good idea.

> _And I'm hanging on your words like I always used to do_

Lea pushed himself against Isa’s arm, like he always did, never one too concerned for personal space. He sighed, his breath thick with sleep and nicotine. Then he sighed again, and fidgeted. It occurred to Isa that he was searching for words. Something he’d never known Lea to do in any of their too many years. Lea, who wouldn’t even consider a rough draft of any declaration or thought before voicing it, was hesitating.

“I’m glad you’re here. I think-” Lea’s voice was like breaking glass against the quiet murmur of the radio, hot against his cheek again. “I think I might have-”

Isa said nothing, he didn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. The moment felt so fragile, even the slightest touch could send them careening into the abyss.

He could hear Lea swallow thickly against his ear with his forehead pressed to his temple, he could feel Lea’s fingers brush against the hair at his neck, he could see - out of his bloody eye - Lea close his eyes as though he were the one in pain.

Isa’s head, despite himself, rolled towards Lea’s. The staples in his cheek surely pressing into Lea’s own, the stitches across his nose surely brushing against Lea’s own - but maybe reminding him of exactly what Isa had put himself in, in Lea’s stead, was something he could stomach even in their fragile moment.

Spite, it seemed, still was thicker than sentimentality.

> _I only know this because I carry you around,_

Lea’s breath shuddered, against his cheek, hidden in a quiet laugh before his fingers tightened at the back of Isa’s neck and his lips pressed against the staples in Isa’s cheek, followed again by that shuddering breath.

“Fuck me this isn’t going to matter in the morning when you come down, is it?” Lea said it more to himself than Isa, who’d done nothing more than turn his head slowly as they stumbled through this unexplored raw and terrifying vulnerability between the two of them.

He could have rolled onto his side, buried his hands into that red hair and made it very clear how very much it mattered. He could have kissed him back, he could have spoken up, he could have put words to the 8 years of pain seizing at his lungs. He could have screamed, he could have demanded retribution. He could have demanded satisfaction. He could have demanded an apology by way of teeth and tongues and fists and nails.

Because Lea was here, as much a supplicant as Isa had ever seen him, had ever known him capable of being and yet did not deserve to be forgiven.

> _I would never lie to you, No  
>  I felt you long after we were through._

Unbidden tears silently rolled down his cheek as Lea, his fingers unwrapping themselves from the nape of Isa’s neck, turned away.


	7. there will be no tenderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanitas grows up flawed and broken. Ventus grows up right there with him.

Foster care was, to the surprise of absolutely fucking no one, a goddamn horror show. Foster care was basically the government taking in all the poor, abandoned, forsaken kids of the world, and deciding, “Fuck it, no one gives a shit about them anyway,” and then doing jack shit to look after them. Group homes were just what middle-class white people decided to rename orphanages, to make them sound a little less barbaric, though they were hardly any different. Some of the kids still had living parents, but they were just addicts or in prison, or didn’t bother to do anything that actually came with being parents, and so those kids ended up in the system, left to the care of overloaded social workers and caretakers who almost certainly had to qualify as a sociopath before they were allowed anywhere near children. 

At least, that was Vanitas’ take on what foster care was. He might have been a little biased.

(Eat shit, Oliver Twist.)

He never knew what end of the spectrum his parents fell on-- dead, drug addict, or just dead-beat-- but he knew one thing: he likely would have been better off dead, or never born at all, then ever have been forced to grow up in foster care. Not having any parents wasn’t a bad enough setup, oh no, he was lucky to be mixed too (mixed with what? Who fucking knew! Black, Asian, Sudanese? It was anyone’s guess. Thanks Mom and Dad!), and stuck in a foster home in the shittier part of LA. Not the poor part, because there was plenty of white people around. Just shitty, in the way that only LA could be shitty. People who were preachy about being vegetarian spending $200 a week on ketamine. Articles in the paper claiming that gangster rap was the cause of all the gang violence while forgetting to mention the institutionalized oppression and racism at the poverty level propped up on every newsstand. Vanitas grew up in the part of LA where white people weren’t rich enough to send their kids to the safer private school, but still were uppity enough to lobby against any fucking peanut butter sandwiches within 400 feet of the campus. It fucking sucked.

There was only one thing about foster care that didn’t suck, and that was that Ventus was there with him. Or, maybe that was just a matter of perspective; he was sure that to someone like Aqua, it sucked a whole fucking lot. But, for Vanitas, it was the best thing that happened to him, and funnily enough, his was the only person who’s opinion he gave a shit about. His, and Ven’s. 

Well, sometimes Ven’s. When they were younger, that was a lot more often. When they were still in the group home on the cross between Madison and Cherry Hill, he cared a lot more. But, after Ven left, and moved to the nice neighborhood, where they had gates in front of the housing complexes to keep poor bastards like Vanitas out, and where people noticed if kids weren’t being fed properly, or didn’t have functional shoes, Vanitas stopped caring about his feelings as much. 

(That’s what he told himself. The truth was he still cared. He still fucking cared a lot, more than he could ever say, more than he even really understood. But admitting that would be saying that Ven got to have some sort of power over him, even after he ditched him, and Vanitas refused to grant him that, even in his own private thoughts.)

He used to think that Ven was different-- that Ven would always be the exception. 

He grew up knowing that it was a waste of his time, a waste of his effort, to bother trusting anyone. His parents up and ditched him before he was even old enough to remember them; the first home he lived at was run by a psychopath who liked to have sleepovers and monitor kids in the bath, and every social worker he ever had barely bothered to remember his name, let alone give a shit about the fact that Vanitas had ‘broken his wrist’ two times in just as many years, and had run away six times in the span of a month. The only people who he didn’t give shit to on sight were the other kids in the system. As a whole, they could be pretty shitty-- everyone learned quick that you looked out for yourself, because no one else was going to do it-- but there was an unsaid level of respect and understanding shared between foster kids. When the adults in their lives were so overwhelmingly shitty, they were fairly reluctant to make things even worse for each other. Sometimes, that meant banding together, but often, it just meant _‘don’t help, but don’t hurt either’_. It was a code they all played by.

Ventus had been different. Ventus actually tried to be nice and help people. 

Maybe that was why Vanitas felt obligated to look after him; Ventus seemed to be so naive, compared to him. Why would he bother helping anyone else out, if he wasn’t? It wasn’t as if he was exactly rolling in good fortune; he lived in the same shitty group home that Vanitas did, had the same crap deck handed to him at birth, and no one was ever going to catch Vanitas being interested in sticking his neck out for anyone. So, why was Ven so different? 

They met when they were both nine, and he could still remember the first thing he said to him.

“Your name sucks,” Vanitas had pointed out, “It’s stupid. It’s not a real name.” 

Ventus hadn’t verbally replied to his insults. Instead, he simply pulled back, and punched Vanitas in the teeth. 

Obviously, they were best friends after that. 

They ended up in the same foster home because their files were slapped with identical brands of ‘medical needs’. _Atrial septal defect_. Vanitas had memorized the words by the time he was in the fourth grade. A hole in his heart, a big gaping chasm of nothingness where his most vital organ was supposed to be. Well, he technically had a heart, but it was all fucked up, and it meant that he had to take special meds and had cardiologist appointments every six months to make sure it wasn’t getting too big too fast, because the doctors knew he was going to have to have surgery, but they were holding off on it as long as possible, because his body was still growing, and they didn’t want to crack open his ribcage and start pulling shit out until they absolutely had to. Ventus had the same congenital heart defect, and so they ended up at a group home that was licensed to look after kids with those sort of problems. Two different kids, from entirely different backgrounds, both ending up at the same foster home because they shared the same fucked up birth defect-- it was almost poetic. How fucking precious, it was a match made in heaven, the stars aligned to bring the two of them together. 

Except that was all bullshit because by the time he was seventeen Ventus got adopted and moved the fuck out and started acting like he was too good to put up with Vanitas’ bullshit, flipping between not returning his calls and hanging out all the time with the other kids in the family that adopted him. Fuck you too, Ven, you fucking asshole, he should have known you’d ditch him just like everyone else. 

But that came later. Before that, they were close. Before Ven got all uppity and entitled, he and Vanitas used to watch each other’s backs when they’d sneak their way into the local junkyard to mess around with the piles of abandoned cars and furniture found within. Vanitas used to push Ventus off the ratty and stained La-Z-Boy that they had designated as the throne to the Scrap Yard King, and then the two of them would collect soda cans and other bits of metal to turn in for quarters so they could go down to the arcade and then fight over the right to play as Chun-Li on Street Fighter (no doubles, Vanitas had made that rule). They used to help each other cheat on math homework, and they would sit through one another’s MRIs, perched on a chair in the back of the room, waiting for their turn, and also playing a game of I Spy to pass the time where they’d have to be still. (It was a lot of _‘I spy something white’_ , because they were in a fucking hospital, in a room with a giant fucking imaging machine, and every goddamn thing in there was white.)

When Vanitas started his picking, Ventus would try to stop it. He’d ask why he was so obsessed with digging at his face, why he would pull out pieces of his eyebrows, why he’d dig and dig and dig with his nails until he left scars and pockmarks in his cheeks, and Vanitas never had any good answer for him. _Because it fucking feels good. Because it makes me feel like I exist as an actual human and not just some weird nebulous concept, that only has sentience because you interact with me. Because when I do this, you pay attention to me, and I want you to give a shit about me, because no one else in my life ever has._ All of those things sounded stupid, and so Vanitas never said them, and just kept opening up fresh holes in his face and his arms, because it bothered Ventus that he did that, and he’d do anything a hundred times if it irritated Ventus.

For awhile, during those years, it was almost too easy to forget that they really were separate, different people. So much of their baggage overlapped-- cardiologist visits, meetings with social workers, even their birthdays were just a day apart. It took just one year for that to turn into a combined birthday, whenever the couple running the foster home bothered to care long enough to celebrate that sort of thing, and of course it was Ventus’ birthday that was given precedence, given that his was first. They shared doctors, they shared pill boxes, they shared bunk beds, they shared clothes and even shoes and whenever people talked about them, their names became a single sound, always _VanitasAndVen_ \-- never just Vanitas, never just Ven, always rammed together, mashed into a whole new name, one that tied them together. 

It got a little ridiculous when they ended up sharing a surgery date for open heart at sixteen. But, hey, better that those two little assholes were both laid up for twelve weeks at the same time, rather than one of them trying to drag the other into his bullshit in the middle of recovery. Ventus went first, because he always went first, Vanitas was always stuck in the metaphorical chem-trails of his wake. He ended up stuck in pre-op with nothing to do but watch Maury and pick at the scabs on his chin until it was his turn to be wheeled into the operating room, and when he woke up, it was to Ventus standing over him, wearing an ugly hospital gown and the breathing tubes still stuck in his nose. 

“Aw fuck, I lived,” Vanitas remembered saying to Ventus, who nodded, and looked very serious about the whole thing. 

“Yeah. Tragic really. I could have sold the story rights to some Hollywood director. I’d have told them that you died giving me your heart, or something like that,” he joked sarcastically. 

“Fuck no, this is my shitty heart and I’m getting buried with it, asshole.” 

Ventus was wheeled out of recovery after that, and they weren’t able to speak again until later that night. 

They had separate rooms in the hospital. _It’s a safety precaution_ , the doctors said, _we can take care of you easier if you’re in different rooms_ , the nurses said. It was all bullshit. They kept them apart because Vanitas was a bitey little fucker who didn’t like the constant prodding and fiddling with the IVs in his hand and who picked and pulled at the staples in his chest so much the attending surgeon threatened to have him put in psych ward cuffs. Vanitas had thought about challenging him to do it, but then considered better of it; he might be able to pull his wrists out, but they’d tie down his ankles too, and he hadn’t quite mastered slipping out of those restraints just yet. 

Separate rooms or not, that didn’t stop Vanitas from getting out of his bed, and dragging his ass down the hall into Ven’s room that first night. He was still hopped up on drugs and attached to enough monitors that he was pretty sure he legally qualified to be sold as a Super Nintendo, but he still pulled his ass up, grabbed onto the rack that held his IV drip, and shuffled his ass across the hall. Ven was awake when he stepped into the room, and he didn’t say anything about Vanitas’ presence there. He only moved over on the bed so that Vanitas could sit on it too, and then the two of them pulled their gowns over their heads so that they could get their first proper looks at each other’s scars. Ventus’ was a narrow, clean, straight line, like the zipper of a jacket down the center of his chest. Vanitas’ ended up slightly off-centered, and he picked at it so much that it was molting and splitting in places. When they healed, they would end up looking much the same-- Ven’s neat and barely noticed, and Vanitas’ dark and gnarled, always catching the eye. 

He liked it that way. He got to tell people his heart was so rotted that it had to be taken out, and never put back in. It was only partially embellished. 

Six months after that, Ventus was adopted. Turned out that one of the attending surgeons at the hospital had some nosy fucking kids who took a liking to Ventus, and when they found out he was in foster care, begged their dad to adopt him. So Eraqus came by with their social worker and he and Ven had a few meetings and then Ventus was gone, pulled out of the system and deposited into a mansion in the bougie part of town. His new ‘siblings’ were Terra and Aqua who were in undergrad and the sort of kids who made valedictorian and got their names in the paper. Terra was probably even quarterback and Aqua prom queen, the fucking shitbags. Vanitas hated them, but Ven didn’t, and so Ven ditched him, and went to live with them instead, and he never really got over it, despite always telling Ven and anyone who’d listen that he didn’t care. 

(He had never cared that Ven left. It was that Ven had left without him that was the problem.)


	8. the only thing i ask, love me mercilessly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanitas barrels towards self destruction.

If he wanted to, he could easily blame everything that came after on Ven’s decision to ditch him. In fact, he did, on several occasions. Usually when he was feeling particularly bitter about the whole thing, usually when he knew it’d hurt Ven the most. 

Vanitas had been getting himself into trouble long before he met Ventus, and none of that behavior stopped after they started hanging out, but there had been a period of time where he at least had some restraint, some boundaries, courtesy of Ventus and his standards and morals or whatever. They’d sneak out to go fuck around at the local playground, smoking cigarettes they stole from convenience stores, almost challenging God to try and kill them earlier than they were supposed to by mixing nicotine with a heart condition. They barely paid attention in school and listened to Nirvana and ACDC while smashing bottles behind the Ralphs. They were the typical misaligned teenage assholes, and that suited Vanitas just fine. He probably would have been content with being just that, so long as Ventus stuck around with him.

But after he left, he had a whole lot of time to do fuck all by himself, and so Vanitas decided he might as well take a nosedive and ruin as much of his life as he could. He went back to being a runaway, went back to hustling, went on drugs, and stopped giving a shit about what happened to him, and what sort of consequences he might have. 

At nineteen he had dropped out of highschool and never bothered to get a GED. A week after he turned eighteen, he was kicked out of the foster home because they weren’t gonna get paid to take care of his ass anymore, and so Vanitas started crashing on couches and in shelters, or just testing his luck in the junkyard La-Z-Boy if neither of those options worked out. He sold drugs for money, then turned around and spent that money on more drugs, because he might as well make this shit as cyclical as possible, might as well feed into his own self destruction at breakneck speed. No one cared either way. Not enough, anyway. Ven sometimes pretended he cared a little bit, but rarely did it ever make a real difference. 

He broke out of rehab the first time because withdrawal was a lot like feeling like someone set him on fire and then got mad at him when he began to start burning up alive. He woke up a week in to his body covered in sweat and bile burning in the back of his throat. He tried to puke it up, but it only left a nasty acidic, almost metallic taste in his mouth, which was just fucking great, thanks for that body. He spent the next four hours pulling at his hair, yanking it so hard that it came out in pieces rather than strands. Not that it really did a lick of difference; he looked like shit beforehand, so a few bald spots wouldn’t hurt his image any. 

By lunch, he decided he sure had enough of that shit, and by dinner, he had pried off the screen from his window, and dropped the ten feet from the second floor onto the grass below. 

Maybe people would have assumed his first stop would have been to his dealer, to get his fix. But, in reality, his first stop was Ventus’ place. Purely because dealers needed money, and Vanitas happened to be fresh out of that, of course. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered. Ven was the one who got him locked up in the first place; he wasn’t going to swing by for cookies and shit when he got his ass thrown into lockup. 

Ven had a balcony outside his bedroom, because of course he fucking did. A goddamn modern Cinderella story, a fairy tale of the ages. He got a new room all to himself in a fancy house in a gated community, and it only made sense that he had a balcony, because that’s what all rich kids deserved, a perch for them to stand and look down upon all the worthless poor kids who were so far beneath them. That’s who Ven was now. Ven had actual branded prescriptions and wore real Jordans while Vanitas was lucky if social security sent his check on time to pick up his meds and everything he wore was stolen from the Goodwill. Fuck Oliver Twist, he was living in the life from Prince and the fucking Pauper. 

Oh yeah, the balcony. Ven’s balcony. It was great, because Vanitas was able to climb up the terrace, and get into his room from the balcony, because being rich apparently also made Ven an idiot because he didn’t fucking lock the door to it. 

Crossing the city from the rehab to where Ven was living in Westwood took a few hours, and so by the time he crawled into his room it was well past midnight. Vanitas didn’t try to be quiet about anything-- he wanted Ven to wake up-- and once he finally did, his initial greeting was just a shit-eating grin and a little wave. 

“Hey Ven.”

“Van…? Fuck, are you really here?” Ventus wasn’t awake. If he was, then he wouldn’t be asking such dumb questions. But, Vanitas decided to fuck with him anyways.

“No. I’m a ghost. I died of heartbreak, and came back to haunt your queer ass. Always knew I was your favorite,” he said sarcastically, grinning at Ven with all his teeth. 

That night, he stayed over. He hosed himself off in Ven’s shower, and then sat on the floor playing the Sega Genesis while Ven went about the time-honored tradition of trying to get a comb through the knotted mess that passed as Vanitas’ hair. He’d never known how to do anything with the shit; it was a 3C curl and the white assholes who ran the foster home on Cherry Hill didn’t know shit about it, and so Ven took it upon himself to at least try to get it to resemble something other than a ratted rope mop. It was a weird ritual between them-- Ventus fixing his hair, Vanitas letting him with only surface level bitching and moaning about how hard he had to pull-- but it was one they fell into without thinking, one that came naturally, even with the knowledge that Vanitas had broken out of court mandated rehab and snuck into Ventus’ room in his new house with his new family hanging in the air. It was almost enough for Vanitas to close his eyes, and forget all the shit that happened. 

But then the next morning, Aqua came in to wake Ven up and saw Vanitas there, and she caused a huge scene about it, calling Vanitas a bad influence and a burnout and all kinds of names that Vanitas happened to wear with pride, thanks so fucking much, Aqua. He eventually just walked away from her, while Ven was still arguing, passing by Terra in the hall as he headed to the front door. 

“Sup,” he said, as he flipped him off. Vanitas stole the VCR from the living room to sell at the pawn shop for some money, and when he called Ventus on a payphone later, he was informed that he wasn’t allowed to come over anymore without asking permission first. 

“What am I, fucking five?” Vanitas scoffed, “Fuck Ven, did they take your balls when they patched up your heart, too?” 

Ventus didn’t like being coddled. He didn’t like how Aqua and Eraqus seemed to baby him. Vanitas knew that, and exploited it. So, though the rule was set, he rarely ever followed it, and Vanitas would end up sneaking over quite a bit, whenever the mood struck, whenever he needed a fix that wasn’t from weed or coke or some alcohol in the parking lot of the liquor store. 

He had dreams about eating Ven alive. Dreams where he’d wrap his hands around his throat and dig his nails in, tearing and gouging into the soft, tender flesh of his neck. He’d crush his windpipe, feel his hyoid crack under his grip. It wouldn’t take much pressure, Ven was always so thin (too thin, he always thought). Then, when he was lying there, rasping and choked for breath, Vanitas would find his scar. That perfect zipper line down his sternum, the scar that was a mirror of his own. He’d find it, all neat and clean and perfect, and just like before, dig his fucking nails in then rip open Ventus’ chest. He’d tear out his heart and snap his ribs, gnawing and breaking and chewing every part of him, everything inside of Ven, in order to absorb it into himself. And, it wasn’t as if he’d be strong enough to fight back. He might not even want to. Because surely, for as much as Vanitas wanted to devour him, Ven must want to be eaten. They were meant to be together that way, mashed and molded and stitched together in some Jekyll-Hyde-Frankenstein, fucked up but complete, the jagged, raw edges of Vanitas shoved into the soft, delicate pieces of Ventus until they fit.

He settled for biting him, but not eating him. He’d pin him down, either to the floor, or the bed, or a wall, and he’d sink his teeth into his neck or his shoulder. He’d grab Ventus’ hand and leave imprints of his teeth on his wrists. He bit down on his ring finger so hard once that it was nearly severed; even now, he still carried a scar, and Vanitas found a sort of fucked up pleasure in it, because that was him, that was his mark, on Ven’s body, forever. When the police would eventually pulled his body out of a dumpster, or find it washed up on Venice Beach, he hoped they’d ask for a dental record, and Ven could offer them that finger, to prove who he was, to show that he had once truly existed. 

Still, for as often as he’d go see Ven, he rarely stuck around for longer than a few hours, or a day at most. Ven would offer him an out, he’d tell him that he could stay in the house permanently, if he just got his shit together, and stopped trying to get Aqua to punch out his teeth every time she saw him. 

“If you stick through rehab, if you get clean, I’m sure Eraqus would help you out,” Ven told him, and Vanitas just laughed in his face and took another bump of coke off the back of his hand. 

He was never going to stay. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, and frankly, he fucking didn’t. Maybe for Ven, that sort of life was a welcome relief-- stability worked for kids like him, kids who spiraled and bumped against walls, searching for some sort of guidance or direction. They’d end up with people like Eraqus, or Terra, or Aqua, who’d slow them down and pull them back, set their head on right, and then send them off into a padded room where they could lose their shit without consequence. Vanitas, on the other hand, was the opposite, the kind of asshole that moved in a straight line that would lead him right off a goddamn cliff. He knew fully where he was going, and he was waiting for the fall, the crash. When his bones would break against the jagged rocks below, and he’d be split into pieces, he’d die smiling, because he’d been barreling towards that end for his whole life, and finally, finally, he’d managed to have done something right. 

But, knowing that didn’t change the fact that Ven always asked, and Vanitas always pretended to consider, before he turned him down. 

Sometimes it’d be a quick, decisive _‘no’_ ; snorted and scoffed and with a mocking laugh aimed into Ven’s face. _Are you stupid, Ven, you know I’m never going to stick around here, I’d rather eat my own ass._ Other times, it’d take him a minute, where he’d act conflicted, like he really wanted to stay, like he didn’t think that living in the same house as someone like Aqua wouldn’t make him want to fucking drink battery acid and hang himself by his ballsack, no thanks Ven. 

Aqua hated him. He wasn’t stupid; it was more than just ‘disapproval’ or ‘dislike’, or whatever other bullshit words Ven would come up with to soften the truth. He didn’t know why he bothered trying to make excuses-- it wasn’t like he cared one way or the other how Aqua felt. He fucking hated her too, so the feeling was mutual, and he liked it that way. Clear cut lines between them, an established dynamic they both understood. He’d keep fucking up and showing up in Ven’s life, and she’d keep hating him and telling Ven to ditch him. It put Ven in the middle, and he knew that he hated it, but that suited him just fine too; Ven needed to have some sort of conflict going on in his life. 

He always made sure that Aqua knew when he was around. Or, at the very least, that she knew when he left, because then she’d have to live with the fact that Vanitas had been rubbing his poor, drug-addict, fucked up hands all over her pretty little perfect life in her high class perfect house, and she hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it. He liked leaving a mess in the kitchen, cereal scattered on the floor and under the fridge, milk left out on the counter to spoil, a huge salad bowl pulled down and filled with Lucky Charms and Trix and some Frosted Wheat for some extra crunch abandoned on the counter with only a few bites of it eaten. He’d take a shower in her bathroom, dump all her shampoo and soap down the drain, and dry his dick with her face towels. He stole a few of her shirts one time, mostly just to piss her off, but also because he was all out, and he knew they had to be her favorites because they were hung up in a different part of her closet, away from the heavier sweaters and thick pants that she probably took with her when she’d go back to school up north. 

He also left his mark on Ven, with bruises on his neck and a few jagged pieces cut or ripped out of his hair. He knew Aqua always noticed everything, and he’d be sure that Ven couldn’t hide anything that they did together, that she’d have to look at him and see that Vanitas had slept over and probably lost his tentative grip on reality and assaulted him, because he left Ventus with a bloody nose and a hitch in his gait. 

Vanitas had manic episodes and Ventus always suffered the brunt of them, and they only got worse after Xehanort picked him up on the street that one time, and offered him two-hundred bucks a week to let him do medical experiments on him. 

Hey, money was money, and Vanitas wasn’t too attached to his worthless corpse anyway. 

Human drug testing was unethical but pretty lucrative, and given Vanitas’ medical history, it only made the results that much more desirable. Vanitas didn’t like how the pills made his heart race and made him forget long stretches of time, until the point where he woke up next to the dumpster of a strip club somewhere downtown, with a weird swelling in his jaw and a twenty dollar bill stuffed into his sock. But, he did like how it let him go longer without sleeping, it let him clear the six foot jump up onto the new trellis that was underneath Ven’s window, it gave him the strength to punch Terra in the face and actually knock him back. So what if he snapped to reality sometimes while in the middle of kicking some dude in the teeth? Who cared if he had left scratches so deep on his wrists that they scarred over that he had to wear bracelets to hide them from his parole officer, lest he think Vanitas was trying to off himself? (Maybe he was, that was none of his fucking business) Vanitas was getting by just fine, he was handing it, he was getting through each day all on his own.

Maybe when he crashed and burned, the explosion would be big enough to take Ventus with him. One could only hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Vanitas' narrative, at least for now. Slightly different composition-wise, but I hope if you read this far, you enjoyed it regardless!


	9. 10001 Albums to Listen to Before You Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Music defines every generation, but also defines every individual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being a self indulgent love note to a lot of things, as well as a spiritual sequel to 13 Stitches. 
> 
> To the formative albums of my life, to my accidental introduction to punk music by my draft dodger father, to the toxic relationships in my life that, to this day, are defined by the music they introduced me to and how they changed me and taught me about myself.

> __ I was listening  
>  _ Listening to the rain  
>  _ _ I was hearing  
>  _ __ Hearing something else

_ Marquee Moon _ was Lea’s father’s album. Lea didn’t know the man well, he was flighty and somewhat detached from reality in Lea’s opinion - which was one he gave freely. As Lea understood it, his parents had made the exodus from some nowhere land in midwestern America in late 69, wanting to be part of the chorus of dissension in the effort against the war. And 3 years later, amidst the Eastern Offensive that dominated newspapers and television for 9 whole months - a funny coincidence - at Good Samaritan Hospital in late June, found he and his girlfriend with a child to be responsible for. 

And they were responsible, in their own way - as unconventional as it may have been, he had reasoned. Lea wasn’t really anyone’s fault. 

The album snuck into his father’s possession, much like being a father had snuck into his life.  _ Marquee Moon _ was not like the music of the movement his father proudly proclaimed himself part of. (The kind of music Lea was raised to) It was easy to hear how it might have become part of the collection to the uninitiated, but to Lea - who had listened to the record almost endlessly - knew it was different. He didn’t know how in any kind of genre defining way, being all of 5 years old. 

But  _ Marquee Moon _ was not about togetherness, and positivity and feelings of joy and peaceful revolution.  _ Marquee Moon _ , as far as he could tell, wasn’t about anything. It was about things, and the thoughts that punch their way, unbidden, into your mind.

He didn’t know why he liked that.

But he did.

> __ Planless and mindless scraps from anywhere  
>  _ Bunch of used parts from garbage pails everywhere  
>  _ _ Frankenstein became a monster just like you  
>  _ __ Your scars only show when someone talks to you

Lea was given  _ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables _ for his 9th birthday by his parents.

Their holdover flower power logic was that if the lyrics to Holiday in Cambodia on the back of the sleeve were anything to go by was a sign that the youth of America hadn’t lost the fire of the movement that had ushered them to the Golden Coast nearly a decade prior. 

They were somewhat misguided. 

Obviously, they had been on the money about the subject matter, but seemed to have forgotten the fragile state of being that is being 9 years old. Being 9 years old and never having lived anywhere than in the back of a VW bus parked in the various public lots up and down Speedway, being 9 years old and bouncing in and out of homeschooling in that very same van and public school, being 9 years old and never having felt any kind of structure in your very short life.

It shouldn’t have been surprising Lea found a voice he didn’t have in the album they handed him that day in June. 

From front to back, the songs on the album were hysterical. Tonally, in the way the singer jackknifed through melodies and the words growled through gritted teeth and thematically in the way black humor was fundamentally woven into the lyrics of the music. The world was ending, and hadn’t the whole thing been a stupid joke?

Lea wore the tracks down on the record in 2 years. 

In 6 years, it might be considered an omen. 

> __ You lie in the graveyard  
>  __ Well you're rotting away  
>  __ When I talk to you daily  
>  __ You've got nothing to say  
>  __ You lie in the graveyard  
>  _ Well you are down making plans  
>  _ _ Well you control all my thoughts  
>  _ __ Well you make dust fall

Lea bought  _ Locust Abortion Technician _ when he was 15 because he was certain the title alone with appall his parents. 

It didn’t. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. 

Lea brought the album with him the first time he’d invited himself to Isa’s with the declaration that he didn’t listen to good music and the silent second chance at parental disapproval. (at 15 Isa could count on one hand the bands he knew, and liked, that sang in english) It was unfortunate then, for Lea, that Isa’s mother couldn't read english and was equally uninterested in any album with the name ‘Butthole Surfers’ emblazoned across the front. 

At 15, how could either of them be aware of the drug fueled backwards exploration of genre and general human decency the band had been cultivating? But Lea found only the rally cry of the petty delinquent. Isa found something Lea would share with him. 

Perhaps it was an imposition. Did Isa like the music Lea played for him because he finally had a guide to certain parts of ‘being American’ his family would never be able to take him to, and was finding a piece of a culture he wasn’t sure belonged to him? Or did Isa like the music Lea played for him, because Lea bullied him with it? Maybe Isa didn’t have a choice, because all Lea ever knew - much like the music he listened to - was steamroll.

(Or was it that weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that he knew marked him a liar when he’d ask Lea if he’d heard anything good lately knowing it meant Lea would loudly be occupying his home again and being friends with his mother while Isa would pretend very hard to be irritated with the whole affair)

> __ I like it, I'm not gonna crack  
>  _ I miss you, I'm not gonna crack  
>  _ _ I love you, I'm not gonna crack  
>  _ __ I killed you, I'm not gonna crack

Everyone owned  _ Nevermind _ and Lea was bitter about it. Lea wanted to believe he had found some untapped potential in some unknown band from Washington that he could lord over someone in some excessively xeroxed zine he’d been saying he’d make for 2 years. (Lea’s congenital defect that prevented him from finishing a single goddamn thing he started was likely terminal.)

But then Smells Like Teen Spirit was on the radio and the jig was up. 

The end of an era as it were.

Not just for Lea’s punk rock credibility but possibly also the bullshit halcyon days of public high school. Lea graduated because he wasn’t as much of a disinterested dumbass as he’d have people think, and Isa graduated in the top 5 of his class pretending he hadn’t tried very hard. (He had tried very hard.) And so Lea's congratulatory joke was the Descendant’s album _Milo Goes to College_  with  _ Milo _ scribbled out and  _ Isa  _ scrawled in its place. 

And it would have been funnier (because it was funny) had Isa not been harboring a cinder block in his chest with the guilt of knowing exactly what he wanted the next 4 years of his life to look like and how those 4 years involved Lea in, now - finally - agonizingly, no uncertain terms. (and what those terms made him and probably an insult to whatever ideology Lea had learned from a record player and probably too romantic for his own good for someone who still made a scene out of rolling his eyes out of Lea calling his mother by her first name after 4 years of him doing it and his mother laughing about it because she had the audacity to  _ Iike Lea _ )

It was probably good luck Isa didn’t go to college, either because of the money or because of the conversation he refused to have . 

> _ Destroy the mind, destroy the body _ __  
>  _ But you cannot destroy the heart _ __  
>  _ Destroy the mind, destroy the body _ __  
>  _ But you cannot destroy the heart _ __  
>  _ And you, you make me so I need to disconnect _ _  
>  _ _ And you make it so real _ _  
>  _ __ I don't need your love to disconnect

_ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness _ was a good album, but Billy Korgan’s voice fucking whining at him through the radio about being at some crossroads of life and the potential of the journey and the power of love was definitely salt in the wound when he lay in the back of a Chevy Bevelle he’d never hated more in his life and smelled like 5 people that periodically lived there that left him with a real and actual cross to bear carved into his eye socket the night before. 

The local had absolutely worn off, and his heartbeat was singularly located in his right eye and Lea’s lips on his cheek burned like he’d stubbed out a cigarette there even 8 hours later. Isa almost wished he had, instead of what had really transpired. 

Of course, the fatalist part of his brain that had been winning lately could count all of the ways Lea had burned him. Itemized by every opportunity he squandered to stay with him while he ruined his life, by every petty theft to keep themselves fed, by every fist fight and tire iron brandished to keep themselves safe, signed and dated by every individual staple and stitch in his face. 

The list, he knew, would only get longer. 

But the back door of the van would open, and Lea would be standing there. Shirtless and freckled with a cigarette in one hand and a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth smiling crooked at him like they’d just slept off a bender and it would suddenly be hard to care exactly how long that list was. 

It wouldn’t happen like that ever again.

He left through the passenger side door, 2 shirts he knew to be his that hadn’t left the van in 5 years clenched in his fist. 

He might have heard Lea call his name as he walked away.

But he didn’t turn back to check. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs referenced from the albums in this chapter are:   
> Marquee Moon - Television  
> Your Emotions - Dead Kennedys   
> Graveyard - Butthole Surfers  
> Lithium - Nirvana  
> An Ode to No One - Smashing Pumpkins


	10. 358

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up is hard. Sometimes relationships don't grow with you.

He thought about it a lot after the staples came out. After the blood settled in his eye cleared, after the black and green bruising faded. After his skin had knitted itself closed again, leaving the new and pink trail of destruction through his eyebrow anchoring him into some world that belonged entirely to Lea but who’s burden was shouldered only by himself. 

He thought about how he was a coward.

He, who’d stared down a knife prepared to remove the eyes from his skull, was a coward.

He’d been afraid to open the letter when it came. Cold sweat, full body clench, afraid. After weeks of standing in front of the xerox at the library, endlessly spewing transcripts and handwritten drafts of essays he was sure were contrived and a transparent grab at being perceived as likable to be stuffed into envelopes and sent out to institutions bigger than himself meant to control his future. His father had been a doctor in Kermanshah, now he worked in the liquor store 2 blocks from their house. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to college, but it felt like an obligation in ways he was sure a lot of his classmates couldn’t appreciate.

His mother didn’t read english well, even after nearly two decades in the states (they only ever spoke Farsi at home, and any lists or notes left around the house were written the arabic alphabet) but she knew what his name looked like written in the latin alphabet even if she never wrote it that way. She was the one to shove the letter in her open palm to his chest with a nod towards it, like he hadn’t noticed her slap him in the chest.

This wasn’t the only application he’d sent out (he was a coward when he wouldn’t admit exactly why it was all of the schools were in California), but it was the first response he’d received in return. 

“Panicking doesn’t change what it says.” she’d said, giving his sternum another light smack. 

He’d been afraid to drag his index finger through the fold in the envelope, he’d been afraid to unfold the letterhead, he’d been afraid to read a single word of it.

Stanford, it seemed, had accepted his application with an offer of financial aid. 

> _ Palo Alto is 358 miles north of Venice Beach.  _

He’d been afraid to tell Lea. He’d been afraid to tell Lea because telling Lea meant he’d have to tell Lea. It sounded stupid in his head. (It was stupid.)

Telling Lea meant he’d have to be honest. 

He thought about it a lot, especially after the hospital and the night in the van; how he could have told Lea then that he hadn’t applied outside the state because he didn’t want to leave LA without him and how the thought of asking him to come with him exhausted and mortified him - how he hadn’t applied outside of the state because, he’d subconsciously reasoned with himself, the shorter the drive, the less gravity of the ask. He thought about how asking had always been, stupidly, part of the plan and all of the fumbling and vague ways he could have told him were part of it too. He could have told Lea then he was like a house on fire and Isa had always been letting himself burn. That Lea was the sun and he’d gone blind with staring. That for all the ways Lea could avoid giving a straight answer that made his blood boil, for all the times Lea would flake and accept no accountability, he’d always been half in love with him, for all the good that had ever done him. And he was afraid Lea would understand. 

Because what then? 

They’d live in the van? Lea already did, Isa practically did. He liked it more than he’d ever admit aloud. Lea never owned much, Isa didn’t need to. Surely campus facilities would be better than Lea’s showers and meals in gas stations and the YMCA when he was on that end of town. Surely Palo Alto would be kinder. But Lea had always made his nomadic lifestyle seem comfortable, having not really known anything different his whole life. Isa was never sure if it was for him, but maybe it could have been, if he wasn’t a coward. Maybe he would have done it, just to be together.

Maybe Lea could be proud of him. Maybe Isa could be proud of himself. Surely there was a reality where Isa could take pride in his own accomplishments. Maybe there was a reality where Lea talked about anyone but himself. Maybe they could be the same one. Maybe in Palo Alto Lea wouldn’t have to do,  _ well _ , any of the things he’d been doing to make money. Maybe Isa could get a real job, maybe they wouldn’t have to live in the van. Maybe in Palo Alto there would be an apartment that his mother would tell him is too small, but would be big enough for both them. Maybe there was some college band looking for a bass player. Maybe Lea would fit in like he never really seemed to in any of the bands he bounced in and out of in LA. Maybe Isa would find his in academics. Maybe he’d find some fit in all of the things he’d ever said he’d wanted to be when he was younger, before the peroxide and orange bottles of pills and bags of white powder and surgical staples and blood. 

Maybe they would fit together.

Maybe they fit like that night after the hospital that never would have happened, only this night Isa could look Lea in the eye. Only this night the staples in his cheek wouldn’t press into the freckles on Lea’s. Maybe they fit together like a hand tangled in hair, like a thumb pushing into a hipbone, like lips against teeth. Maybe they fit together like two people that could be honest, two people who weren’t cowardly, two people who weren’t cursed forever to be stuck in orbit around the other never making contact but never out of sight.

Maybe in Palo Alto Isa could scream. Maybe in Palo Alto he could have told Lea all of the ways he’d ever self sabotaged for his sake, could tell him just how heavy the weight of his friendship had been all of these years, all of the warning signs he’d ever willingly ignored because he loved him and forgave him. 

Maybe in Palo Alto he wouldn’t have to yell. Maybe in Palo Alto Lea knew how to apologize. Maybe there would be nothing to apologize for, maybe there never would have been. Maybe the way Lea stared at him wasn’t for the scar through his eye Isa knew him to be responsible for, and maybe the way Lea stared at him was for simply wanting to see him. Maybe Isa would want to be seen. 

> _ Palo Alto is 358 miles north of Venice Beach.  _

The financial aid wasn’t enough to cover tuition to finish a degree. They’d done the math. Not with his father working at the liquor store for 75 cents above minimum wage. His dad had sat him at the kitchen table, and with the most shame he’d ever seen in his father’s face, apologized again and again that they couldn’t help their son. He told him how proud they were of him, and they wished they could do more for him. How they would save the money for him, how desperately they wanted this for him. Isa wouldn’t let them take out a loan on his behalf, he wouldn’t burden them like that. 

Isa differed his acceptance, and took a year off.

And then two.

And then three.

And then took a knife between the eyes.

> _ Palo Alto is 358 miles north of Venice Beach.  _

 

Palo Alto was the worst thing that never happened to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it an AU of an AU? Who knows?  
> All of Lea and Isa's baggage that's currently unknown in the canon, particularly the circumstances of being parted with their hearts combined with their very known and rapidly deteriorating (and ultimately destroyed) relationship with each other is incredibly interesting to me. (come on KH3 don't let me down) Combined with this AU as a transparent grab at negotiating my own fraught youth, and how Lea and Isa ended up being some proxy for one relationship in particular anyway I wrote this. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	11. words are futile devices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dem learns about Ienzo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Demyx goes by "Dem" predominantly in this AU, for a variety of reasons, some of which will likely be made apparent through the course of this chapter.

It had started with a broken bottle of soda and twelve stitches in his feet and a visit to the low-income 24 hour clinic. It progressed to three more visits over the course of just as many months, before finally, Dem had the courage to ask the nurse on a graveyard shift if he wanted to go get McDonald’s after he got off work. 

It took another month for the realization to hit him: he realized he didn’t know much about Ienzo. 

He knew his name. He knew his job. He knew where he worked, and he knew his shift schedules. Comparatively, that was a lot. Most people would probably consider that knowing a decent amount about another person. But he also didn’t know how old Ienzo was (older than him? younger? He had one of those faces that made it hard to tell), didn’t know if he could drive, didn’t know what he liked to eat. The times that he did interact with Ienzo, he always ended up being the one who talked the most, mouth running at 200 miles per hour about next to nothing at all.

That was sorta the most obvious difference between them; Dem talked a lot, but never really said anything, while Ienzo spoke very little, but everything he said carried some measure of importance to it. 

The lack of knowledge was first pointed out to him that night that he took Ienzo back to his apartment, and they listened to Nirvana and shared a bag of Red Vines. Ienzo knew where he lived (because Dem took him there). He knew that Dem had broken at least three bones and had forty-seven stitches in the past six months (because he’d been the one to treat them). He knew what he weighed, what his blood type was, what medications he was on (because being a nurse gave him access to Dem’s medical file). He knew Dem liked indie grunge music and had three different copies of _Disintegration_ on vinyl (because those things were openly displayed in his room). 

But Dem didn’t know he lived in Van Nuys, until Ienzo told him. He didn’t know he liked punk music, until he mentioned “ _Humankind_ ” in passing, and Ienzo brought up the Ramones show in Irvine. He didn’t know Ienzo probably had a lot of things to say about himself, that Dem didn’t know, simply because it took him six weeks and two nights spent talking on the floor of his apartment for him to figure out that he should probably shut up about himself and try asking Ienzo questions instead.

So, Dem decided to make it a bit of a game. That always helped him before, when he had to learn his times tables and different scales. Make it a game, and his brain would remember to do it, because he fixated on weird things, he liked patterns and little challenges, that promised him a reward in the end.

“This is probably stupid. It’s kinda stupid right? Just tell me if you think it’s stupid.”

To his credit, Ienzo didn’t tell him that. When Dem suggested the idea that they play two truths and a lie, he even seemed interested, though, admittedly, confused. Probably because they weren’t in middle school, and it wasn’t some birthday party sleepover, and what exactly did Dem hope would happen, with that sort of approach? Why not just ask questions like a normal person, like everyone else probably did? Why did he have to make it so complicated?

“It’s not that complicated. I’ve played before. I think it’d be fun.”

Probably the only thing more embarrassing than having to do a party game to get to know the guy he was maybe possibly hopefully somewhat trying to date was thinking out loud, and Dem was guilty of both.

They played the game off and on. It’d be overwhelming to try and cover an entire human lifetime (or at least the past twenty-six years of one) in the span of one day, and so they break it up, making it something they did when there was a lull in conversation, or when Dem was driving Ienzo to his apartment after work, or when Dem went in for another round of stitches, because he was trying to open a box, and gouged a knife into his palm. 

Ienzo was allergic to shellfish and dogs. He finished high school early, and immediately went into nursing school. He liked his food too salty for what was probably good for him, and that included desserts (that one Dem had been so sure was a lie, but it wasn’t). He liked music but could never hope to create it, and he was secretly most proud of his high score in Donkey Kong, which had yet to be knocked out of the top three of the local arcade. There was a lot of things Dem got to know about Ienzo, things that he would have never thought to ask with questions like _“what’s your favorite color?”_ and _“do you prefer sunrise or sunset?”_ So, maybe the game wasn’t a bad idea after all, and maybe Dem was doing a little better with this attempted flirting thing than he thought he was. 

He had nightmares from watching _Neverending Story_ as a kid. He spoke Serbian, and a little bit of German, the first from his mom, and the second from his father. His favorite book was _Flowers for Algernon_. He hated coffee, but drank it because it kept him awake, and it was offered freely in the clinic’s break room. He stole a keychain from some tourist trap at the Grand Canyon fourteen years ago, and still had it, attached it to his keys. 

“Your dad let you keep it?” Dem had gaped a bit in surprise. His own parents likely would have forced him to return it, and apologize, if Dem had ever been bold enough to think he could steal something and get away with it.

“We were in Nevada when he noticed. He wasn’t going to turn around so I could return it,” Ienzo pointed out. 

“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Dem murmured, “Still kinda cool though. I’ve never stolen anything.”

Ienzo looked at him, his expression somewhere between disbelief and amusement. “I don’t think petty theft is as cool as you’re making it out to be.”

There was a lot of things about him that he would would have never thought to ask about. Other aspects, other details, that Dem learned through observation, not from playing a guessing game. 

He picked up quickly that Ienzo was sensitive to certain smells. Dem didn’t smoke cigarettes himself, but he often smelled of nicotine anyway. It came from Lea, who burned through a pack every other day. Though, lately, it’d been double that, because suddenly Isa was gone, and Isa had once been the only person who could keep Lea from sucking on a filter every second he was awake. 

Ienzo didn’t act especially offended by the smell, but Dem noticed him reacting to it, more than once. Usually he’d step up to speak with Dem, to explain how much longer he expected to be on shift, or he’d drop into the passenger seat of his Neon, and his brow would twitch, then his nostrils would flare, inadvertently taking in a deeper breath of that scent, first to recognize it, then, once he realized what it was, to locate the source of it. Dem started keeping a spare sweatshirt in his backseat, to throw on whenever he went to pick Ienzo off, and a can of aerosol cologne took up residence in his cup holder, always on hand in case he needed it, in case he smelled even worse than usual, thanks to Lea and his unbreakable habit. 

The first time he sprayed it, he’d done it as a quick courtesy before Ienzo got into the car after work. Lea had gone through three cigarettes in the hour that he spent in Dem’s car, shooting the shit in the parking lot of the Y, and the smell had lingered like a bad guest. “Ugh,” Ienzo rubbed his nose the second he got into the car, and when Dem looked over, he had the first traces of tears in the corners of his eyes, “What’s that smell? It’s awful.”

Dem threw the cologne out the window while going 70 on the 101. 

Ienzo ate his favorite food first, because sometimes he’d run out of time on his breaks, or out of space in his stomach, to finish the rest. Ienzo hadn’t gotten a haircut in over two years, and so now his bangs hung in his eyes, and it was uneven on one side. He needed glasses to read, but he never seemed to have time to bother getting a real prescription, so he just bought cheaters from the impulse rack at the Walgreen's. When they broke, he just taped them if they could be spared, or bought another pair if they couldn’t, and they always looked weird and almost oversized on his face. He bit his nails and chewed on pen caps, and at least once that had backfired on him, because Dem visited him in the clinic and saw blue ink smeared across his mouth and staining the front of his scrubs. 

Where Dem’s face ended up getting freckles when he’d spend time in the sun, Ienzo just had a scattering of beauty marks and moles on his face. There were three that Dem noticed in particular, because they were almost perfectly aligned on the sharp plane of Ienzo’s cheekbone. One beneath the other corner of his eye, one in the hollow of his cheek, one above his mouth. Dem likened it to Orion’s Belt once, because that was the only constellation he knew how to spot offhand, and Ienzo had laughed. Initially Dem wondered if he was laughing at him (entirely possible), wondered if he’d said something stupid (almost certainly), but when he fumbled and apologized, Ienzo just shook his head. 

“No, I like it. That’s kinda cheesy, but it’s sweet.” His words made Dem’s tongue feel thick and heavy in his mouth, and he couldn’t find any words to reply. “I didn’t think you were much for constellations or stuff like that,” he tacked on, after a beat.

“Oh, I just...I like mythology and stuff. I think that’s kinda cool. They’re great stories!” he explained, enthused, and Ienzo listened patiently while Dem described to him his favorite mythological stories for the next two hours.

Initially, their game started a bit one sided. The first dozen times they played it, Ienzo was the only one coming up with stories to share, lies to be caught in, since Dem was more interested in learning more about Ienzo than about giving more details about himself. He had actually hardly noticed the unevenness of it, until Ienzo pointed it out himself. 

“Aren’t you supposed to play too? Give me something to guess.”

Dem hadn’t been expecting that. He hadn’t thought that Ienzo would actually want to hear him talk, since he’d been finally given the perfect opportunity to keep Dem quiet for a little bit. He figured he probably already knew all he needed, all that might interest him, and so what could Dem come up with that he couldn’t glean or figure out on his own? 

The first thing he told him was that he used to be on the swim team. 

“Not for very long. Just like, sophomore year,” he elaborated, when Ienzo asked, “My dad wanted me to try sports. I liked it, but, you know, it was real competitive. That wasn’t really my scene. Swimming was always just fun. So I quit, and went back to band.”

“Yeah,” Ienzo had said, as he drank from his bottle of Jarritos that Dem passed over, “I always assumed you were in band. You seem like a band kid.”

Dem wanted to ask him more about that. Not necessarily what made him ‘a band kid’ because he knew that answer pretty well, but more the fact that Ienzo had taken the time to consider that part of him. That he thought about him for any period of time, that he speculated and assumed things about Dem, things that maybe he liked, and didn’t send him turning in the opposite direction from. 

He told him about how his mother had always been playing music in the house when he was growing up, from Bach to Stevie Nicks, and that was maybe most likely where his whole thing with music started. 

“She, you know, saw something on TV about playing music helping brain development. So she played a lot of music. I think it’s just supposed to be classical music, but she played everything. It was kinda cool. I have a lot of records.”

Ienzo’s eyes had fallen to the piles of vinyl scattered around Dem’s apartment, the shelves lined with albums, the dozen or so that got the honor of being hung up on the wall.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Dem told him things he never said to anyone else. The entire point of the game was to tell each other more about themselves, but an unintentional side effect was the abundant honesty that came naturally. He was already someone who overshared on his best days, a person who never was good at lying or hiding things. But, he found that there were still things that he thought, he felt, that he hadn’t confided in anyone else, that he willingly told Ienzo. 

“I got my first kiss in a game of Truth or Dare.”

He didn’t know why he admitted to that. He didn’t know why he even brought it up. Until then, they hadn’t really addressed those sorts of things. They were in that weird period of pseudo-dating, where they weren’t actually dating, but they also weren’t hanging out because they were just being casual friends. It was weird. It was sort of nebulous and undefined and Dem kinda liked that, because it wasn’t complicated, but he also hated it because he didn’t know what it meant, he didn’t know where to draw the line, or if there was even a line to be drawn. They didn’t talk about their relationship, or lack thereof, they didn’t touch or kiss or really do much other than listen to Pink Floyd and smoke weed and eat the tamales they bought out of a car in the Sears parking lot. It was not _not_ a relationship, but it also wasn’t a relationship. And Dem brought that to their mutual attention, by speaking up about kissing out of the blue. 

“Oh,” Ienzo said, seemingly pretty calm about the whole thing, not at all thrown off by that admission, unlike Dem who was trying to decide if he shrank down small enough if he could squeeze himself into the gap between his couch cushions and just live there forever. “I did too. Well, it wasn’t me playing Truth or Dare. A girl in my class was just dared to do it. That was my first kiss.”

“How old were you?” Dem asked, because in spite of his own embarrassment, he was curious.

“I think...twelve?”

“Oh. I was seventeen.”

Dem was seventeen when he first got kissed because Dem spent the majority of his adolescence trying to figure out what was wrong with him. (Turns out the answer was just _‘a lot’_.) He spent the first years post puberty pretty sure he was doing something incorrect, because very little about himself made sense, from the clothes he wore to the way he cut his hair, and it was more than just teenage rebelliousness and angst or some need to fight social conformity. Dem was too distracted internally to give much thought to people outside of himself, and so he never thought about dating, never considered relationships and companionship because he was pretty sure no one would want to put up with him. He barely tolerated himself at the best of times; why would anyone stick with him on an implied permanent basis by choice? 

It was probably too stupid, too hopeful, for him to remind himself of the fact that Ienzo had stuck around him for this long, and continued to do so. 

Though, despite that, he figured he probably got on Ienzo’s nerves. It wasn’t that Ienzo acted like he annoyed him, or outright said it, but Dem was pretty sure that his constant talking and his questions and his apologies had to get old, even a little bit. He’d been told before that he tested people’s patience, because he never really knew how much was too much, never knew he crossed a line until he was twenty yards past it and it was too late to take what he said back. He was pretty sure the only reason Ienzo didn’t outright tell him to get lost was because he was a nice person, and more patient than Dem deserved. 

He never said anything bad about the stupid things Dem did, never laughed at him or criticized him when he made a mistake or got something wrong. He was simply too nice to put Dem in his place, so Dem tried to do it for him, by berating himself, and chastising himself, for the dumb things he did. 

“You’re not stupid,” Ienzo said to him once, after Dem apologized for his behavior with that excuse. That was the first time he was ever short with him, the first time his voice came out sharp and firm, aside from those times he gave medical instructions like _“keep the stitches clean,”_ and _“don’t take alcohol with these meds.”_

Dem stared at him, taken aback, but recovered, just in time to say a mumbled, “...sorry…” again. 

“Why are you apologizing?” Ienzo asked, as he looked at Dem, his gaze locked with his, his body leaning in closer, as if to stare more intently into his eyes, “Why do you always apologize? Why do you say you’re dumb? You’re not. You shouldn’t keep saying that about yourself.” 

“I mean, I am pretty dumb,” Dem disagreed, laughing awkwardly as he did, trying to relieve some of the sudden tension. It didn’t work; Ienzo just stared at him harder. “I’m serious. I’m not very smart. Like, I ask questions that are probably pretty obvious to you. I keep messing up things, like math, and telling time, and I don’t know as much as you. It’s not like I have a real job; you save people’s lives!” he pointed out, his hand tossed in the air for emphasis, “The only thing I help people do is find Hanson cassettes for their kid’s birthday parties. Not like you need a genius to do that,” he muttered. 

Ienzo didn’t look convinced, or impressed. “I fuck up my right and my left all the time. I still don’t know how to drive. I get carded for Nyquil. I’m not perfect, Dem.”

“I think you are,” he blurted out, the words coming out of his mouth before he could stop them, and he immediately wished he could take them back. 

The look that crossed Ienzo’s face wasn’t one Dem was able to place. It seemed...tired. Frustrated? Maybe he was just annoyed. He didn’t know, and a voice in his head told him that trying to figure it out would be pointless, or, at least, counterproductive. 

Finally, Ienzo sighed. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, please,” he requested. “I’m not perfect. No one is. So...don’t keep saying that. About me, or about you.” 

Dem swallowed. “Shit, okay, um, I, uh, guess I’ll try,” the words tumbled out, awkward and stilted.

Ienzo seemed satisfied with that.

Nine months into talking to him, Dem probably knew as much about Ienzo as he was going to tell him.

So, that only left out the things he didn’t talk about.

There was a lot of those things. He hadn’t noticed it at first-- mostly because he was simply too distracted by the fact that Ienzo was _talking_ to him at all, and it was all so new and exciting and nerve-wrecking-- and so a lot of things went over his head. But, after over half a year, Dem started to pick up on them. Maybe Ienzo was right, and he wasn’t as stupid as he kept thinking he was. 

There were the nights that Ienzo would meet him at reception, and tell him he didn’t need a ride home, and asked Dem to leave. 

“Sorry, I have to work late, I just got a call.”

“Another clinic?” Dem asked, confused, because Ienzo knew he didn’t mind hanging out in the waiting room, and had done it plenty of times before, loitering until Ienzo was free from his shift. “Do you need a ride?”

Ienzo didn’t answer at first. His mouth just pressed into a line, his shoulders tensed, and then he took in a deep breath. “I’m getting picked up by a coworker. It’s across town. Don’t worry about it.” 

Dem still didn’t want to go. “I could keep you company, until they--”

“You need to leave Dem,” Ienzo interrupted him. Then, a pause, and a sigh. “Please. I’ll call you tomorrow.” 

“...Okay.” He agreed, but he wasn’t happy about it, and he figured Ienzo knew. At his side, he felt his hand lift, and move forward, inching towards Ienzo’s, and he even began to lean in, his body moving on instinct, until Dem abruptly stopped himself, and forcibly took a step back. “Don’t forget to call me, okay? Call when you get home. I don’t care how late.” There was a weird, unexplainable anxiety gripping Dem’s gut, a slow building panic he couldn’t name or place the source of. 

_Call me, so I know you mean it. Call me, and tell me that you’ll see me again._

It was only after Ienzo did call, and asked Dem to pick him up after work the next night, that he was able to breathe easily again.

There was the fact that Ienzo didn’t talk about him, or them, or ask any questions about either of those things, that made him jump to conclusions about what he was probably thinking.

He had to know. He’d seen Dem when he helped Isa into the clinic, had seen him when he was covered in blood and helping Isa hold his shirt to his face. He’d seen him when he came back an hour after dropping off Isa at the van again, left with nothing but a bag of prescription painkillers and Lea’s nervous energy. He still hadn’t found a shirt, hadn’t even really been thinking about it, because there was blood, so much blood, and he was panicking and afraid and it still didn’t feel real. They’d gone back to Dem’s, and sat on the edge of his bed, just listening to Rush’s _Moving Pictures_ as it played in the background. Somewhere between YYZ and Witch Hunt, Dem got up and Ienzo didn’t stop him, as he pulled off his sports bra, and headed towards the bathroom. 

“Sorry, I just...Fuck, Christ, I’ll be back. Just gonna shower real quick.”

Ienzo just nodded, and when Dem came back, he was lying on the couch as usual, his back to Dem, as he dug through his drawers, and got dressed. 

So, he guessed Ienzo had figured it out. But then, why didn’t he ask about it?

For awhile, Dem didn’t ask why he didn’t ask. Part of him didn’t want those questions to be voiced, on either side. He really didn’t want to bring attention to his whole deal, because it was weird and complicated and he got real tired of explaining it. He’d had to tell his parents. He had to tell his boss. He had to tell doctors and the DMV and too many places to count. He just...didn’t want it to be a thing, and every aspect of his life made it be a thing. So, he kinda liked that Ienzo didn’t mention it. 

However, the longer it went on, the more Dem began to think of them as not-not dating, he felt that it had to come up. It would be something that they probably needed to talk about right? After all, they had talked about everything from Dem’s fear of earwigs to Ienzo eating ice cream topped with giant flakes of sea salt, so surely they’d end up talking about something like that, something that kinda sorta might be something they should discuss, if they were going to be kinda sorta maybe dating.

Dem was the one who broke the seal on the topic. 

“I figured it bothered you.”

“Why would you assume that?”

Dem shrugged. The simple answer was _‘I assume it bothers everyone’_ , but he didn’t want to admit that, because it sounded stupid and petulant when he thought it over in his head. The longer answer was, “You never really, you know…mentioned it.”

Ienzo looked at him from the passenger seat. “You do realize that part of my job is not mentioning those sort of things, right?” he pointed out. He spoke slowly, as if he was trying to parse together whether or not Dem was being purposefully difficult, or if he truly didn’t understand that.

Dem, for his part, just furrowed his brows closer together, and pouted at the windshield. “Yeah, well, it’s like… Then is this part of your job or something? Is this what you do for work?”

_‘This’_ was the two of them in the parking lot of a movie theater in Santa Monica. _‘This’_ was the fact that Dem had three pairs of shorts and a stick of deodorant in Ienzo’s bathroom, and Ienzo had practically carved a intent into his couch in the shape of his left side. _‘This’_ was Dem picking him up from work, and taking him to his apartment by instinct, because he already assumed that was where he wanted to go, so that he could sleep for a few hours before Dem took him to his own place in Van Nuys to sleep the rest of the day while Dem did his shift at the mall, then picking him up at the clinic again later that night. _‘This’_ was Dem having grabbed onto Ienzo’s hand without thinking about it as they walked across the parking lot, and the urge he kept feeling to lean over, and press his lips to his. 

“That isn’t--” Ienzo said, and for the first time, Dem heard something tight and awkward in his voice. He looked over, and Ienzo was pointedly avoiding his eyes. “No, okay, that’s not what I meant. I just meant that it’s not my business to talk about that sort of thing. I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would.”

Well, that was a fair assumption. Dem talked about nearly everything else. 

“Well, then,” Dem felt a rush of embarrassment sweep over him, “Fuck, um, then… _does_ it bother you?” he ended up asking, while his hands gripped the steering wheel, and he tried to find someplace to look.

Ienzo caught his eye, as he glanced in his direction. Something about that gaze made Dem stop, and the two of them looked at each other for a long moment. 

“No.”

Dem released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Okay.” 

And that was the end of that.

There was something else Ienzo wasn’t telling him (there was actually a lot of things Ienzo wasn’t telling him, that he couldn’t tell him, because of HIPPA and confidentiality, and a huge list of things), but Dem could never really pinpoint what exactly that thing was.

“I feel safe here,” Ienzo said once, when he was lying across Dem’s couch, a blanket pulled up until it covered everything but the top of his hair. His voice sounded unfocused and muffled beneath the quilt, somewhere between exhausted or maybe reluctant. 

“Is this another game?” Dem asked, because what else could have spurred that sort of conversation? He was sitting on the floor of his apartment, playing the chords to _Pictures of You_ on his guitar while Ienzo tried to sleep. He’d pulled a double shift last minute and it was now six in the morning, long past when Ienzo should have been in bed, and way before Dem usually got up, for his 11 o’clock shift at the mall. 

Ienzo didn’t answer for a moment, and Dem figured he’d finally gotten to sleep. Maybe he’d just been talking while he slept. Dem did that all the time, so he figured Ienzo probably did it too. That’d be interesting, if he did. Not only for something they’d have in common, but just because Ienzo ever having something to say so desperately that it came out when he wasn’t cognisant enough to control it seemed so out of character, it fascinated Dem to even flirt with the idea. But, Ienzo did eventually speak up, and his voice was too clear to be from his sleep. “No. I mean it. It’s nice here. It’s quiet. And I can trust you.”

Dem didn’t know how to respond to any of those things. Other than putting down his guitar so that it actually was as quiet as Ienzo just spoke of, he didn’t have anything to say in return. He couldn’t find any words that felt like the right response to that sort of admission, and he felt wholly undeserving of it, not for the first time, and certainly not the last. 

“Yeah, you can,” he finally blurted out, the words erupting from his mouth before he could even realize they were being said out loud, and not in his head, like he so often did around Ienzo. “I mean, shit, you know that, I’m a shitty liar, but like, I mean…” His voice faded gradually, trailing off, before he turned around slightly, and looked over at Ienzo. He’d emerged somewhat from the nest of blankets and couch cushions, and Dem managed to maintain eye contact with him as he said, “You can trust me. And you’re safe here. It’s cool.”

Ienzo didn’t respond. He just closed his eyes, and finally fell asleep.


	12. words i thought i'd choke on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Dem learns too much about Ienzo.

Ienzo had dry hands. 

“Because I have to wash them all the time,” he had explained, when Dem had mentioned it (the embarrassment of that remark came a few hours later, and Dem apologized the next time he saw him for being weird and rude and did he mention he was sorry?)

It wasn’t really like Dem had the softest hands either. The pads of his fingers were rough and calloused from playing guitar, and he had chipped nails and cracked knuckles because he spent the majority of his day in a temperature controlled mall serving the general public. But, he still noticed how, the first time he bumped his hand against Ienzo’s, how dry his skin was compared to his own. 

When he got up his guts to take Ienzo’s hand and hold onto it, on purpose, and for more than just a few quick seconds, he slipped their fingers together, and held tight, finding he didn’t mind his skin being rough or dry, because he was too busy thinking about how warm his palm was, and the sensation of Ienzo tightening his grip of his own accord. 

He liked that feeling. He liked feeling Ienzo _wanting_ to hold his hand, liked the tightening of his fingers around Dem’s, and knowing it was something he decided to do on his own. He was constantly worried about pushing for something that Ienzo didn’t want to give, but that was undeniable proof that, in at least some small way, he wanted to keep up this...thing going on between them, whatever it was. Dem tried not to think about it, or label it; he just focused on enjoying it.

 

Or, at least he tired.

Sorting through the different thoughts and feelings that surrounded his relationship with Ienzo was a lot like being high. There were a lot of moments where he felt great-- incredibly happy and exhilarated and untouchable-- that abruptly came to an end with an unpleasant, sudden crash. 

He saw one of the guys from the night that Isa nearly lost his eye, while in the parking lot of Ienzo’s clinic. 

He lucked out in that he had been sitting in his turned off Neon, in a parking space towards the back of the staff parking lot. He tended to park there the nights he came to pick Ienzo up, rather than up front because sometimes he came by a little early and didn’t want to come off as weird or over eager or creepy by loitering around the reception desk for two hours until Ienzo was scheduled to get off. Sometimes Ienzo had to finish giving report, or there was some emergency he was cleaning up after, which ended up causing him to take an extra ten or fifteen minutes to show up, so Dem learned to try to cut his arrival inside as close to 3 AM as possible, in order to seem less like a stalker, and more like someone who had other shit going on in his life. (He did; he didn’t lack things to do. He just. Really liked hanging out with Ienzo the most.)

The guy he saw couldn’t have been anyone else-- he was parked several hundred yards from the back entrance, but he knew that eyepatch, the ponytail of black hair streaked with gray. He’d gone completely still in his seat, and slumped down a little behind the steering wheel, to hide from view. His car was off, no headlights, no interior lights, no reason for someone to assume that he was sitting in the vehicle and had noticed the man arrive at all, and Dem was glad for his dumb luck and decision to spare the life of his battery that prevented him from getting caught. Because he was pretty sure if the guy saw him, he’d recognize him. He’d recognize him, and then he’d probably remember that Dem had been a petty dealer with a big mouth and lack of understanding of the predetermined boundaries of where he could and could not sell, and the guy might decide that despite letting Dem off six months ago, it’d probably be better to get rid of him entirely. Maybe he was paranoid and the guy didn’t care that much at all, but Dem wasn’t going to take that chance, and so he hunched down further in his seat and hoped the guy left before Ienzo’s shift was up. 

He didn’t. Dem sat in his dark car for over an hour, watching the back door, waiting and hoping and praying for it to open and for the guy to exit and leave so that he could go inside. Finally, it was time for Ienzo to get off work, and Dem reluctantly started his car, still keeping his head low and lights off, as he slowly moved to the other side of the building, parked in the drop off area up front, and walked inside with his nerves jittering and his eyes darting around the clinic, trying to go unnoticed and doing a pretty bad job of it. 

Ienzo was waiting for him, and Dem rushed up to the desk. “Hey, we, uh, should go, like, now. Because I need to get gas and it’s super late and you know how weird this part of town gets at like 3 AM and--”

“Sorry, something came up,” Ienzo interrupted him, his voice strangely calm, in the face of Dem’s near panic, “I have to go to another clinic again. I’ve got a ride; you can go home. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” Ienzo said. 

Dem felt his eyebrows knit together. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just tired,” Ienzo assured.

Dem knew he was lying. He could see it in the tension in Ienzo's jaw, the way he kept focusing his attention in the direction of Dem's face, but his eyes weren't looking into his. But he didn’t know why. 

 

“Shit, I’m annoying. I bet that’s it; I bet I got on his nerves.” Dem was a bundle of anxious energy, talking at the rate of one hundred words a minute, and picking up speed the longer he was left to think over his actions. “Aw fuck, do you think it’s because I’m always at his job? Do you think he got in trouble with work? Shit, what do I do if I got him fired?” He was biting his nails at that point, gnawing them between his fingers until one ripped off in his mouth. “I mean, Ienzo is super smart, I bet he can get a job anywhere. He’d probably work at a big hospital, I bet he’d fit in there, probably get a raise too. Maybe he should look into working at another hospital…”

Erlena took another hit of the joint Lauriam passed to her with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “No one works at some fucking urgent care in Central City if they could easily go somewhere else Dem,” she commented, as she exhaled a stream of smoke through her nose, “You sure you aren’t giving him too much credit?”

“Well, I’m sure he’s smarter than Dem,” Lauriam quipped helpfully, which made Erlena laugh. Dem didn’t dispute their remarks (mostly because he agreed with them) and only looked over at Lea. 

“Am I fucking this up?”

Lea, as he seemed to do quite often lately, snapped to attention after being lost in thought, not really listening to what was said around him, because his mind was somewhere else. Realizing that someone was looking at him, and clearly waiting for an answer, Dem watched him think over what had been said the past few minutes before he put together a response. 

“How do I fucking know? I’m not good at that kinda thing,” Lea ended up shrugging instead of helping, and he was the one who took the joint next and inhaled deeply. “...Has he mentioned Isa at all?”

Not for the first time, Dem said, “I told you, he can’t.”

“Yeah, yeah, HIPPA or whatever,” Lea waved the hand that held the blunt between his first and middle finger, “And you haven’t seen him around either?”

It wasn’t just Dem who shook his head; Lauriam and Erlena mentioned their equally lacking run-ins with Isa since he decided to leave. 

“Wonder if he left the country,” Lauriam mused out loud, around a bottle of Bud Light, “Though I doubt his parents could afford it.” 

He and Erlena continued to discuss the possible places that Isa could be-- everywhere from Iran to Tijuana-- while Dem watched Lea, who seemed to retreat back into his thoughts again, disengaging from the conversation just like before. He felt a terrible, awful sinking feeling in his gut, as he imagined what would happen if something like that came up between him and Ienzo, what he would do if Ienzo just up and disappeared out of his life. 

It wasn’t until that exact moment that he had realized how much of a fixture Ienzo had become in it, that even the thought of him leaving made Dem’s chest seize up with panic.

 

“You gotta promise me.”

Dem’s hand fidgeted where it rested on the console between the two car seats. Gently, Ienzo’s hand, which was held in his, squeezed, a reassuring gesture, and he took a deep breath, and tried to calm down.

“Promise you what?” Ienzo asked, because he wasn’t stupid and didn’t agree to promises before knowing exactly what they were. Unlike Dem. Dem, who always agreed and then got into situations where he had to drive Lauriam to the airport at 11 PM or help Lea transport a bunch of newspapers to the recycling center for some gas money. 

“Promise you’ll tell me if this is weird. If I’m annoying you. Like, especially when you’re at work. Uh, not that it’s cool if I annoy you at home,” he found himself rambling again, stumbling over his words, trying to find enough of them to give voice to the countless thoughts that swirled around in his head, “But I don’t wanna get you fired or something, so just, like, give me a signal or something, if you ever want me to shut up, or get lost, because I’d totally understand.” He knew people sometimes needed space from him. He got it. Even his own parents were pretty fine with him leading his own life and only popping up every few weeks or so to drop off a rent check, or see if they had some spare lunch meat in the fridge drawer. 

Ienzo sighed, and Dem was fairly certain that was the first signal he was being given that signal he was pushing into the whole ‘weird and annoying’ territory. “Aw, fuck, I’m sorry--”

“You aren’t annoying me. You’d know if you were,” Ienzo countered, which Dem didn’t have a quick response to, “Look, I’ll tell you if you’re bothering me, but so far, the only thing that’s done that is the whole ‘saying you’re sorry over nothing’ thing.” When he met Dem’s eye again, his expression softened, and he said, “I like hanging out with you, Dem. Don’t you, too?”

“Yeah!” Dem nearly shouted quickly, and slightly desperate. He didn’t want Ienzo to even consider he might think otherwise; it wasn’t until he thought about it a little further that he pieced together that maybe constantly worrying and asking for Ienzo to give him a reason to leave wasn’t necessarily the best way to show that. “Yeah, I like hanging out with you a lot,” he said, a little quieter, but just as sincerely, and when he squeezed Ienzo’s fingers between his, he felt Ienzo immediately squeeze back. 

 

Usually, when they went back to Dem’s apartment, they ended up listening to his records. Typically it was bands like Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins, but sometimes Ienzo picked out The Cure and twice he’d selected a vinyl of Bartok compositions, which they had listened to in silence while sharing a liter of Dr. Pepper. 

That was something they had ended up doing a lot more than Dem thought they would: the sitting in silence. He had always been a guy who hated silence, because he was always so sure that it was the awkward kind, thick with tension and unease and unpleasant for everyone involved. So, he ended up being the person who just never shut up, because filling that void with his own voice gave him something to focus on other than the stifling fear of discomfort and failure that came with feeling like he was constantly disappointing the people around him, which is where silences usually brought him. 

With Ienzo though, it was different. They weren’t always quiet, because no matter what, Dem was a talker and he’d find something to ramble on about, even when it was probably better that he didn’t. But, they had their moments, and they weren’t terrible. Actually, Dem might even call them nice, because it felt good to just sit on his couch, elbow deep in a bag of Cheetos, his feet in Ienzo’s lap, and not feel like he had to be doing _something_ , or saying something, or being a particular person, to keep him around, and make himself worth his time and attention. 

They didn’t always sit on his couch and listen to records though. Sometimes they did other things, in that now familiar and comfortable semi-silence. Ienzo liked to read, and he got into the habit of bringing over piles of books to Dem’s house, that he could thumb through at his leisure. 

(Dem had wondered once why Ienzo seemed to like being at his one-room apartment above his parent’s garage until he’d ended up staying the night at Ienzo’s. His upstairs neighbors were, politely put, advocates of foot stomping, bass-laden music, and loud sex-- sometimes all at once. And though he was in a basement apartment, the area he lived in was a much louder and busier neighborhood than Dem’s, which didn’t make it difficult to imagine that it was a lot harder to read and relax there, than it was above his parents’ garage in the suburbs.)

Ienzo’s tastes in books were varied, but that hadn’t really surprised Dem-- he was smart, college educated, it made sense he liked to read a lot of different things-- at least, not until he found a bunch of worn paperback novels piled up next to his couch, each of their covers painted with some variety of shirtless, muscled Fabio-looking men who held delicate fainting women in their arms. Titles like ‘Highlander’s Captive’ and ‘To Bed a Spaniard’ were mixed in with the copies of Dickens and murder mysteries and Dem wasn’t entirely sure how they fit. 

“Did you buy a mixed lot?” he asked Ienzo once because he knew he frequented thrift stores and used book shops to fill his collection. 

“No, I was missing this one,” Ienzo replied, as he turned the page of _‘Tuscan Millionaire’_. 

Ienzo would read, and Dem would play his bass. The deep, soulful warble of Janis Joplin would be the backdrop to those moments, accented by the occasional low crackle and hum of the record player. They would start out seated side by side on the couch, but, gradually, as the hours wore on, and Ienzo became more engrossed in his books and sought more comfortable angles to read them in, he’d shift and turn until his back was against the armrest and his feet were tucked up under Dem’s thighs. Initial contact would have Dem jumping up with a screech, because Ienzo’s feet, like his hands, were always so damn cold, but eventually, he’d settle down again, resuming the slow strumming of chords. 

 

The time they spent in Ienzo’s apartment was strangely almost in direct contrast to what they did at Dem’s. When they’d arrive, Ienzo always locked the door behind them right away and checked the locks and deadbolt at least three times before settling down. Maybe that should have worried Dem, given that Ienzo never really explained that behavior and he wasn’t nearly so vigilant anywhere else, but he trusted Ienzo to have his reasons. Not to mention that, as of yet, Ienzo hadn’t given him any shit for storing a bag of cash in his freezer, so he figured everyone had their quirks. Maybe it was just a more dangerous area, or maybe he didn’t trust his landlord, or he had some weird obsessive compulsion. Dem didn’t ask about it, because with a lot of things between him and Ienzo, he figured if it was a problem, it’d come up eventually, so he just left it at that. 

There was also the fact that Ienzo would turn off the volume on his answering machine the moment Dem came over. He worked as a nurse, so maybe he just didn’t want to be constantly on call when he finally got the chance to get off work and settle in with a guest, but that didn’t explain how he would jump up to answer the phone before it ever reached its second ring every time a call came in. He’d speak lowly into the receiver, mostly single word answers of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, plus the occasional grunt, then he’d hang up and never explain to Dem who called. Once, after one of those calls, he said that he had to run out for a few hours to help someone with something, and he left Dem behind, offering him money for a pizza to convince him to stay. When he came back, he smelled like disinfectant and the beeswax he used on his hands to try and keep them from cracking after repeated washing, and Dem pretended to ignore the spotting of blood on the cuffs of his sweater. 

They didn’t really listen to music at Ienzo’s house, but they sometimes watched movies, and Dem got pretty well acquainted with the creaky futon that served as Ienzo’s couch and bed. 

They were watching the Princess Bride when Dem looked over and saw the light blonde of Ienzo’s lashes brushing against the tops of his cheeks. He was curled up on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chest, a heavy knitted blanket pulled up to his chin, and his head rolling listlessly on his shoulders. 

“Sorry, I’m probably keeping you up,” Dem apologized, as he reached for the remote, to turn the volume down. Ienzo had done a double shift and had to go in early the next day. 

“It’s cool,” Ienzo disagreed, as his hand reached out from the folds of the quilt, and wrapped around Dem’s wrist, lowering it back to the couch, the volume untouched. “We’re getting to the good part.”

Ienzo’s eyes flickered back to the small television screen. Dem’s eyes, however, didn’t leave his face. He just watched him watch the movie, watched the flickering lights dance across his face, watched the faint smile that rose to the corner of his mouth, as he enjoyed the scene playing out before him. 

Dem realized, rather suddenly, and with a bit of panic, that he was really enjoying that sight, and felt compelled to do something that might destroy the image completely. 

“Hey,” his mouth opened before he could even think to try and stop it, “Can I kiss you?”

Ienzo turned his head towards him, but there was no surprise in his expression. There wasn’t really anything-- not fear, not disgust-- which Dem wanted to be happy about, but there wasn’t necessarily a whole lot of excitement there either. 

“ _As you wish_ ,” one character on the screen said to another, and it was at that exact moment that Ienzo leaned in, and pressed his mouth to Dem’s. 

 

For a long time, they either didn't sleep at Ienzo’s because he only had the futon, or they just kept it up as a couch, and the two of them would sleep half sitting up on it. There was this weird unsaid boundary that they hadn’t yet crossed, but, somehow, after that kiss, and a few others, and Dem feeling confident enough to take Ienzo’s hand in his while he drove or put his arm around his shoulders when they’d walk through a parking lot, that barrier faded, and they put the futon bed down, and slept on it side by side. Not exactly touching, or at least, not for long, not just yet, but he’d fall asleep and wake up to the sight of Ienzo’s face across from his on the other pillow. It was nice.

What wasn’t nice was the night that Dem slept over and there came a loud banging on the door at 4 AM, followed by some shouting, barely muffled by the door.

“Hey! Open up, kid! You got some work!”

Ienzo shot up in the bed, while Dem stayed where he was, completely paralyzed. The voice was hauntingly familiar, the drawl and the cadence all but branded into his eardrums, after replaying that night in the parking lot over and over again. A knife. Six guys, all bigger and broader in Dem’s memory than they probably were in real life. Isa’s blood on the asphalt. Lauriam and Erlena running the second the coppery scent hit the air. Two hours in the emergency clinic, with his shirt wrapped around Isa’s head. He could remember every detail as if it was yesterday as if he was constantly reliving it in an endless loop in his head (mostly because he sorta was). 

And that voice had been there that night. 

The pounding on the door continued, as Ienzo stumbled off the futon, and crossed the room to open the door. He kept the chain on, which only allowed it to open a crack, and the voice on the other side didn’t seem too pleased with that. 

“What are you doing here?” Ienzo said, his voice colder than Dem had ever heard it, “I told you, you don’t come here.”

Achingly slow, feeling like his entire body was weighed down with bricks or lead, Dem sat up in the bed, and watched the scene unfold. 

“We’ve got a problem,” that other voice said, “We happened to be in the neighborhood. Lucky you!”

There was the sound of the door being pushed, and the chain lock protesting against the strain. Ienzo stood firm and unmoving, still refusing to open up. “I said, you can’t come here. This was agreed. Go; I’ll meet you at the clinic,” he instructed and tried to push the door closed.

“He might not make it that far, and it’d be a real bad idea for you to be the cause of that.” The threat was obvious; even Dem, who was barely piecing together what was going on, could catch it. 

Ienzo didn’t move for a long moment. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he stepped back. “Fine. One second.” 

As he closed the door in order to slide the chain out of it’s locked position, he spared a glance over at Dem. His expression was unreadable in the low light, the only real source coming from the glow-in-the-dark face of the clock hung on the wall. “Go to the bathroom Dem,” he requested and then turned his attention back to the door. 

He didn’t need to be asked twice. Wearing only his boxers and a sports bra, Dem crawled out of the bed and quickly retreated to the bathroom, just as the front door was opened behind him, and voices filtered into the small apartment. 

He sat on the toilet reading the labels of everything in Ienzo’s small bathroom for the next hour. From the main room, he could hear those voices, but not really make out whatever words they said. He could only barely discern between Ienzo’s soft, even timbre and the louder, coarser voice of the guy from the night Isa nearly lost his eye. There had to be a third person there-- that rough voice had indicated as much when he arrived-- but as far as Dem could tell, they never spoke. Whether that meant that the person was just quiet, or that their condition was that serious, Dem didn’t know. He just stayed in the bathroom like he was told, staring at a bottle of mouthwash as if it held answers to any of his questions. It didn’t; it just told him about bacteria and gingivitis, and Dem had bigger problems.

After what seemed like hours, the voices on the other side of the bathroom door lessened. There was the sound of the faucet in Ienzo’s kitchenette turning on, and then the doorknob to his hiding place turned, causing Dem to leap back and nearly trip into the tub before Ienzo appeared. 

“Is it over?” Dem asked as Ienzo shut the door behind him, enclosing the two of them in the cramped space, “Is it okay to come out?”

“Not yet,” Ienzo said, and Dem felt his shoulders drop. Ienzo wasn’t looking at him, he realized, and was instead digging around in the medicine cabinet. Pulling out a pill bottle, he checked the label, before apparently deciding that’s what he needed. He turned to leave, but before he could, Dem reached out and touched his shoulder. 

“What’s going on?” he asked because he really wanted to know. 

Ienzo still refused to look at him. His lips just pressed into a thin line, until he finally mumbled out a single word: “work.”

After that, he retreated back into the main room, locking Dem up inside the bathroom again. There was a little more talking, then, finally, the sound of the front door opening, and closing. Dem sat and waited, holding his breath, almost too afraid to step out, but, gradually, he gathered up what remained of his guts and opened the door, to peer out into the rest of the apartment. 

Ienzo had a bottle of cleaner in one hand and a bundle of paper towels in the other as he wiped down his small kitchen table. The room smelled like blood and bleach, and Dem felt sick to his stomach. 

Ienzo noticed him come out, but he didn’t say anything. In fact, neither of them talked at all, for the rest of the night. Dem just crawled back into bed while Ienzo finished cleaning up whatever mess had been made during the time Dem was hiding in the bathroom and couldn’t see. Eventually, he finished, and put things away before turning off the light, and getting back into bed beside Dem. They didn’t say anything, but they both were aware of the other being awake, the two of them lying on their backs side by side in the darkness. 

It was Dem who moved first, rolling over onto his side, and fumbling for Ienzo’s hand on the bed beside him. When he found it, he grasped onto it tightly and was met with a firm, desperate grip from Ienzo in turn. 

He didn’t get any sleep that night. Or any answers. All he got was Ienzo moving closer to him in the bed, and pressing his mouth against Dem’s. For the moment, he let that be enough.

 

Ienzo stopped inviting him over to his apartment. Dem was too afraid to ask if he was welcome over there anymore. At night they either went back to Dem’s, or didn’t see each other at all, save for when Dem would stop by the clinic, and offer Ienzo a bag of McDonald’s and a ride home. For a while, Ienzo got into the habit of accepting the former but declining the latter, and Dem tried not to take it too personally. He was just glad Ienzo was still willing to see him at all, after everything.

They still hadn’t talked about what happened. 

If he was honest, he was afraid. That in and of itself wasn’t necessarily unusual; Dem was afraid of a lot of things, including the drains in pools and any bug with the ability to fly. But he was especially afraid of bringing up that night at Ienzo’s apartment and that somehow is the equivalent of punching a big red eject button on their relationship.

Their relationship, whatever it was (dating? friends who made out and shared a bed? He didn’t know but he was fine with it being left undefined. There wasn’t really words that seemed suited to describe it properly) was important to Dem. He didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to lose Ienzo. They’d known each other for nearly a year and already it was weird to think of going back to the life he had before, the life without Ienzo’s books piled up around his apartment, without the twelve times so far they sat on Ienzo’s futon and watched Labyrinth, the car rides and late-night dinners at diners. He didn’t want to go back; he couldn’t. 

For as terrified as he was, however, his mouth often liked to run off without him there to control it, and that had been a pretty frequent occurrence whenever he was around Ienzo. Like, it was a problem outside of him, but something about him in particular really made it come out with a vengeance, much to Dem’s frustration and embarrassment. 

He brought it up at probably one of the worst times. They were in his bathroom, Dem holding onto the edge of the sink while Ienzo sat on the toilet and pushed up one side of Dem’s boxers. He was given the job of administering Dem’s injections because Dem was afraid of needles while Ienzo was literally professionally trained in sticking them into people, so he took it upon himself to give Dem his doses of testosterone, during which Dem closed his eyes and tried not to pass out.

“Hey,” Dem said, through clenched teeth, “What’s your other job?”

There was a sudden sharp pain as the needle was pushed with a little too much force into the fleshy area of his ass, and Dem let out a loud yelp.

“Ow, shit! Fuck, did I do something wrong?!”

“No, sorry, sorry!” Ienzo quickly tried to calm him down, rubbing the area he had just stuck to soothe some of the sting, “Sorry, that was my fault.” 

The initial shock gone, Dem began to calm down a bit, looking over at Ienzo as he quickly wiped the area with an alcohol pad, and then pulled his boxers back into place. Pointedly, he wasn’t looking at Dem or saying anything else. 

“So...are you going to tell me or…?”

Ienzo’s eyebrows knit together. “I can’t tell you that, Dem,” he said, after a long moment. 

“Can’t, like, ‘patient confidentiality can’t’ or ‘I don’t want you to know can’t’?” he asked.

Ienzo snorted, and his expression flickered with a bitter smile. “Probably both.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Ienzo stood up, beginning to move around Dem, turning his body so that he could slip between Dem’s and the wall. Just before he reached the door, Dem reached out, and wrapped his arms around his neck and shoulders, and pulled him close. Ienzo stopped moving, standing still while Dem pressed his face into his hair, and pulled him into a tighter embrace. 

Ienzo smelled like Dem’s shampoo and soap. He was wearing a Twisted Sister tee that he’d picked out of Dem’s laundry basket. Neither of them had work that day, and the plan was to check out the drive-in, or maybe pick up some shoes at the mall because Ienzo’s pair for work had just split at the sole and was now talking. 

He didn’t want to lose this. He didn’t want this to be the last time he got to enjoy those things. 

_You can trust me_ , his mind told him to say. 

But, for the first time, he thought of a dozen different words he wanted to share with Ienzo, but his mouth stayed shut and said none of them. Instead, he just squeezed him again, and nodded into his hair. 

How much longer could they go without talking about it?


End file.
